The laundry/rap issue

In college, I find myself listening to a disturbing amount of rap music. I don’t know why. I don’t even like rap music. But my iTunes tells me that I’ve listened to the song “Hip Hop is Dead” by Nas (a popular rapper who doesn’t actually think that Hip Hop is dead) a disturbing 24 times, which is impressive, given my other most-listened-to songs are “Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones, and “My Mood Swings” by Elvis Costello. So as you can see, I don’t really have very rappy tastes. So what gives?

Laundry. Every Wednesday, I wash my clothes. I don’t enjoy it, but I pretty much have to or else I’d have to go naked. While college is, I’ll admit, a pretty liberal place, I don’t think that the general population of the University of North Carolina would think that it was particularly groovy if I walked around in, um, nothing. I mean, it’s okay when it’s Woodstock, and heck, Bonnaroo got so hot that people had to walk around naked, but people won’t accept public nudity if the naked guy in question just doesn’t want to do his laundry. Sorry to put that picture in your heads, folks.

But I digress. Whenever I do laundry, it seriously takes, like, a week. I can grow a beard in a shorter span of time than it takes for my laundry to get done, and that’s saying a lot, for someone who just emerging from puberty. I mean, even Russell Kooistra could grow a beard in the time it takes to do my laundry.

And doing laundry isn’t fun. Allow me to illustrate: if you were to personify fun, you would probably get David Lee Roth. And if David Lee Roth is fun, then doing laundry is John Kerry. Even walking into the laundry room is a hostile experience. The first time I went in there, I toted my bag of clothes, only to find that all of the washing machines were in use. I probably could have figured that out by just looking at the faces of the people in the room. I didn’t see one friendly face in the crowd. It seemed like everybody’s face had a look that said, “What in the world are you doing here? Why are you so presumptuous as to assume that you could do your laundry in the laundry room? Get out before we call the cops!”

So while I wait for my laundry to get done, I listen to the song “Hip Hop is Dead” by Nas on repeat. When I run, I listen to “Hip Hop is Dead.” I’m even listening to the thing right now. There are two songs whose words I know by heart, and this is one of them.

But why do I listen to rap music when I do my laundry? I don’t know. I guess I enjoy the juxtaposition of the inexplicable pull that rap offers — of stylized violence, misogyny, and money — against, well, putting your dirty clothes in a washer and waiting.

If Hip Hop is dead, then its ghost is haunting me.

College 101, lessons learned

So. I no longer live in Polk County. I live in a twelve feet by fifteen feet by ten feet cube called my dorm room. Only half of it is mine; the other half is my roommate’s. As I type this, my roommate is sleeping in his bed at 11:22 in the morning, because after you enter college, you never sleep when it’s dark out. Right now, I’m running on four (maybe) hours of sleep, so please excuse me if this seems rambly-tambly, to borrow a phrase from Creedence. Anyways, the first three or so weeks of college have been — not to exaggerate in the least — all-encompassingly transcendent. I’ve learned so many life lessons here in my first three weeks, I’ve almost forgotten that I already know everything because I’m 18. So I’ve decided that today I want to share with you some of the wisdom that I’ve picked up from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Tangent: it should be noted that this is a list of everything I’ve learned in college, so if it ain’t on the list, I either already knew it or never learned it.)

Lesson 1: Living with a roommate is like having a brother that you can’t resolve differences with by punching in the face, or else it’s assault. I haven’t actually learned this first-hand, because I get along with my roommate. But I’ve met plenty of people who loathe their roommate with an all-consuming passion in their soul that borders upon bloodlust. So I guess a mini-lesson here would be: Choose your roommate wisely.

Lesson 2: Not everyone in college is drunk all the time, it’s harder to be let in to a frat party than you think, and once you’ve gotten into them, they will remind you of a middle-school dance, only with drunk people. During college, I have not technically gone to a party at a fraternity yet. In fact, I’ve only been to one party here at all, and there were only about thirty people there, which is a very small number where college parties are concerned. But the reason that I have not been to a frat party is not because I haven’t tried. It’s just that my room/suitemates (whom I hang out with almost exclusively) are all, obviously, males, and in order to get into a frat party, you kind of need to be either (a) female, (b) a pack of females, or (c) in a group where the number of females vastly outnumbers the number of males, or (d) in the fraternity. Now, the obvious response to my rant about not getting into frat parties would be, “Well Drew, if you’re so interested in getting into frat parties, why don’t you just join a fraternity?”

The answer to this question is, of course, “Shut up.”

Lesson 3: Once you enter college, laundry drops way down on your list of priorities. Here’s a quick quiz for the laundry-conscious college student to give him/herself every morning:

Q: Does it smell?

A: Eh, kind of. Wear it anyways!

Lesson 4: Everyone here is smarter than you. Not sure about that? Well just ask someone if they think that they’re smarter than you. Their answer is always “yes.” UNC students as a whole thrive on the notion that they’re the smartest person in the room, even when they’re sitting in a 500-person lecture hall listening to the man who wrote the book on his subject.
Lesson 5: Dave Matthews is the second coming of Beethoven. For those of you who don’t know, Dave Matthews is the most boring musician alive, but I believe that every college student (except myself and maybe seven other people) thinks that he rules face. They don’t call him “Dave Matthews.” Just Dave. Like he’s their buddy. It’s sickening. Note: this is especially true for members of Greek organizations, whose frontal lobes are specifically designed to trigger high-fives all around when one of Dave’s songs comes on.

Lesson 6: Cafeteria food is horrible, but it beats starving. One of my friends claims that she got food poisoning from the cafeteria that my friends and I frequent, so I’m patiently waiting for that plate of bad chicken.

Lesson 7: College makes poor people out of everyone. College forces you to make very dumb monetary decisions, such as, “If I don’t eat today, I can afford to buy that poster of Dave Matthews!” But hey. It’s college, which means we all make those dumb decisions as a collective, and when dumb decisions become collective, that makes them “trends.” So let’s all skip a few meals and buy tickets to that sweet Dave concert coming up in a few weeks!

In the meantime, I’ll be napping.

Oh and PS…. Mom and Dad, I’m almost out of money. Please send more.

Off to college!

As I write this, I am sitting on a futon in my dorm room at UNC Chapel Hill. In fact, by the time that you read this, I’ll have been in college for a week. My mind has officially been blown. I’m moving. Kind of. I’m quitting my job and leaving my parents’ house, where I’ve lived since I was eight (before I moved in with them, I was a lion tamer.). I’m definitely not qualified to go to college. I don’t know what qualities deem a person ready to go to college, but I know that they are definitely not present in me. Freud would probably say that this is my parents’ fault. Moving on.
So I’m going to be living with a roommate for the second time in my life. The first time was at Governor’s School East with a random dude who I had never met before. It worked out great. This time, I’m rooming with Lewis, one of my best friends. Will I still want to be this person’s friend after living with him for a year? Well, probably.
Have you ever tried to sleep on a twin bed that’s six and a half feet off the ground? Dude, not fun. For someone who is afraid of heights as it is and is used to being able to stretch out in a queen-sized bed, lofting a bed as high as it can go so you can stick a TV under it is kind of a big adjustment. I keep waking up in the middle of the night with an arm or even a leg hanging off the bed, and it’s kind of disconcerting, knowing that if I had slept for like three more minutes, I probably would have fallen off the bed and hit the floor of my room. It’s the little moments like this that are going to make college the greatest four years of my life.
I’m signed up for some hard classes, too. I signed up for something called “European History in the 20th Century.” What do I care about what happened in Europe in the 1900s? A couple world wars, some ticked-off communists, the Beatles….that’s about all, right? At least after high school, I don’t have to take any more Spanish….Espere…UNC hace que yo aprenda Español por tres años. ¡Dios Mio! On the other hand, I don’t start class on Tuesdays and Thursdays until 2:00 in the afternoon. Holy cow. Of course, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, it’s a different story. 8:00 in the morning for them. Fun, right?
I mean, it’s college. This changes everything. But I’m at a loss as to how this might change my life. My first two days I’ve been here, my roommate and I have just kind of wandered around, waiting for me to run into people I know, which makes me wonder when the change is going to kick in. It’s kind of annoying, actually. Like, everyone that I know from Governor’s School East is now attending college here. No lie, I can’t go to the dining hall for chocolate-chip pancakes without recognizing at least three people who I know from Governor’s School, as well as running into somebody in the line who I then have to sit with and drag Lewis, who knows nobody, to sit with them, creating an awkward moment for all time while the Governor’s School person and I talk about things we know and Lewis sits silently, staring into his omelet. So that’s always fun for both of us.
On a more “both of us enjoy this” note, our suite is probably located in the most prime location our dorm building. We’re on the ground floor, and we’re the only suite on our side of the building on this ground floor. Our suite has collectively dubbed our dwelling the Man Cave, because the way our suite is set up, it kind of looks like we live in a cave. Additionally, we are men. Pretty self-explanatory, actually. Also, Lewis and I probably have the coolest room in our suite. And I mean that quite literally. We’re the only room in our suite with air conditioning, which comes in handy when the temperature only dips down below a hundred once the sun goes down.
Well, that’s it this week for The Modern Age. Join us next time for Fraternity Parties, anti-war demonstrations, and as many college-ish stereotypes as possible.
Love,
Drew

Jet-lagged and lovin’ it

Well boys and girls, I just got in from England, and boy, was it a drag. London was too big. There were too many people. The subway was smelly. Everyone was too stylish. I couldn’t handle the amount of history that was thrust upon my fragile psyche in such a short amount of time. Scotland was too cold, too windy, and too hilly. The golf was too hard, and my caddy could barely speak English, and kept blathering on about pubs and “St. Andrew’s,” which he insisted, somewhat obtusely, was a place and not a person.

Okay, so I’m joking. Great Britain amazed me to no end. First, my parents and I went to London. Then to Liverpool. And then, as a final gust of wind into the intercontinental sails, we went to Edinburgh, Scotland.

One of the more interesting places we went in London was the Tower of London, and not just because of the things that we saw. What interested me about the Tower was how it was presented, because it wasn’t exactly, to use the parlance of our times, a groovy place. People died excruciating deaths there, some for big reasons, some for no reason at all, and many of the deaths were dismissed as necessary, a grisly form of entertainment. Most intriguing was the way Guy Fawkes was depicted, as a religious wacko, instead of how he is normally portrayed in our society, as a good role model for aspiring anarchists a la the movie V For Vendetta. Point is, the Tower of London was a really uplifting place…. not.

More uplifting was Liverpool, a cloudy, dirty industrial town that is completely unremarkable, except for the fact that a little band called The Beatles got together there. My parents and I paid a visit to the Cavern Pub, a place that we mistook for the Cavern Club, which is where the Beatles played around three hundred shows when they were first getting their start. But once we got down to the Cavern Pub (which was directly across the street and, quite fittingly, underground), we weren’t disappointed. Playing guitar there were these two guys from the local college (I assume), and they ruled. They played energetic, howling covers of classic rock songs, and, strangely reminiscent of the seminal Tenacious D, they were both hilarious and drunk. (Typical stage banter, albeit heavily edited: “You can’t play guitar when you’re this drunk… [downs a shot of whiskey and tosses the shot glass over his shoulder]… or can you?” “We’re about to play Jumpin’ Jack Flash now, and we think we’re awesome.”) So that was entertaining.

On our last day in Edinburgh, my dad and I played golf on a true old Scottish links course, down by the seaside, with real, hundred percent non-golf cart caddies, which is an experience like no other. I was struck by how hard the golf is in Scotland, too. I mean, I know that the game began there, but you’d think they’d have made it a little bit easier as time went on. Shot after shot, I was trapped in three-foot high rough, searching desperately for my ball with my ever-encouraging caddy (bless his heart), who after I would hit yet another shot in the rough, would say, “You know, I think it was just your lie that got you on that one.” Eventually, I just had to tell him, “Look, I know you’re trying to be encouraging and all, but face it… I stink.” In the end I overcame my bad luck, and after shooting an abysmal 54 on the front nine, recovered a little with a 46 on the back. And I ended up beating my dad by three strokes, which is always nice.

Anyways, the thing that I enjoyed most about England was, as Vincent Vega would say, the little differences. I once read some essay saying, “England is like America if things had turned out slightly differently.” I both agree and disagree with that statement, because it seems like England is just so, so weird. I mean, when you go into a restaurant and order water, not only does the waiter/waitress look at you funny, but then they bring it to you in a bottle and leave you to pour it into the glass yourself. Want French Fries with your order? Well you’re going to have to remember to order them separately, because that’s just the way they do it over there — and be sure to call them “chips.” (Want actual chips? Those are “crisps.”)

And people my age act differently across the Atlantic than they do over here. It seems like all of the British young’uns are generally skinny, wear tight clothes and listen to bands with semi-ridiculous names like “The Arctic Monkeys” and “Cajun Dance Party.” As opposed to my kind of people, who are slobbish, have no sense of style, and listen to bands with non-ridiculous names like “Kings of Leon” and “Interpol.” I’m not sure if I had a point there, other than to try to say that really, American kids are just British kids plus fifteen pounds, baggy clothes and a different accent.

ANYWAYS, I loved England and its little differences, but the one thing that bugged me was the flight. See, I am terrified of flying. And having to fly eight hours to England and ten and a half hours back (we had an hour and a half flight from Edinburgh, plus an extra hour on the flight from London to Charlotte on account of the jet stream) almost gave me a heart attack. The only comfort I found was, oddly, in the airline food. It made me feel like the airline cared about what we thought. See, if they had banked on our plane plunging out of the air in a blazing fireball a la Lynyrd Skynyrd, they wouldn’t have fed us. But because they thought that the plane was going to land, they gave us food so we wouldn’t complain to the FDA (Is there another government agency that handles these sorts of things?) about being hungry for nine hours.

Also, they gave us French Fries.

The wisdom of teeth

I try to lead an interesting life, because if I don’t, then I have nothing good to write about. In fact, you can always tell that my week has been boring, because if it was, then I write a column on pop culture or music or the movies or Barack O’Bama’s continuing struggle with cigarettes. This is not one of those columns.

Last weekend, I had one of the most harrowing experiences of my young life. It wasn’t “educationally harrowing,” like wrecking a car or appearing on American Idol, and it wasn’t “life-threateningly harrowing,” like being mauled by a bear or going on tour with Metallica circa 1989. It was just pointlessly traumatic — I didn’t learn anything, and there was relatively little chance that I was going to die. It just ruined my entire weekend.

Have I sufficiently built up the drama yet? Good. I had my wisdom teeth taken out this weekend. And let me tell you: it was the stuff that sitcoms are made of.
So I got to the dentist’s office on Thursday around 10 a.m. After an hour of sitting in the waiting room reading Southern Living — the manliest publication I could find among the waiting room’s Redbook and Modern Homemaker-stocked publications — and listening to the John Tesh Yuppie Radio Hour John Tesh on 98.9, I got called to the back.

I sat down in the chair… I’m sorry, did I say “sat?”

I should have said “was strapped into the chair.” The nurse then proceeded to administer Nitrous Oxide (laughing gas), which exists for the sole purpose of making its victims forget everything they think about, and then think about thinking about things, and then giggle a little bit because their brain can’t keep up with itself, and then the brain wonders if it’s thinking these thoughts because it’s just been given laughing gas or if it normally thinks these thoughts and what’s so funny, I don’t know but it is…

The nurse, apparently then wanted to mess with my head, so she decided to strike up a conversation, asking, “So do you have a job?”

“Yeah, kind of,” I said, between fits of laughter, “I write, a, a, a, a column in the local paper. Hahahahahahahahahaha.”

“Oh, that’s neat. What do you write about?”

“Well, (giggle), anything, really. Uh, probably, uh, this. Maybe even this conversation.”

“Well honey,” the nurse replied in the most saccharine voice she could muster, “I don’t think you’ll be remembering this conversation when you wake up.”

Sensing that she was probably right, I said, “Uh, maybe. We’ll see.”

Four hours later, I woke up on my couch in a sedative-induced haze, with a complete lack of feeling in my mouth. I have no recollection of the events that transpired in that missing time window, but I believe it involved wisdom teeth surgery, charades and the band Hanson.

For the next sixteen hours, my world was consumed by sleep.

And then… pain. Like no other pain I had ever experienced in my entire life. It turns out that you’re actually supposed to take the pain medication that they prescribe to you, instead of just putting it next to your bed and hoping that it works by osmosis.
Oftentimes, I wonder how I’ve made it eighteen years without accidentally doing something to lose a limb, because I can sure be stupid. I took my Lortab, the pain medication that they gave me, and spent the next four days in a prescription medication-induced stupor.

So in the end, I have gained this wisdom to pass on to our children: one day not far from now, you WILL have to get your wisdom teeth taken out. And it will hurt. And you will learn nothing, other than the fact that life is pain.

That, my children, must be lesson enough.

And just for the record, you condescending nurse-lady, I totally remembered what we talked about, because I put it in the paper. Who’s laughing now?

Every movie you see this summer is going to stink

By Drew Millard

You know, Spiderman 3 was actually really bad. If by now, you’re one of the seven people in the universe who didn’t go see it, don’t waste your eight bucks (ten if you go to Epic Theatres in Hendersonville). The combination of the extended dance scene, the three villains, and a side-plot involving Mary Jane that was never completely resolved, convoluted the story much too much to make for an enjoyable film.

Also, the movie presented — to me, at least — way too many questions about Peter’s day-to-day life. Why did he look 30 if he was supposedly about 22? If Peter was Spiderman at night and was in college during the day, when did he sleep? How much did the Daily Bugle actually pay him? Freelance photography for the Bugle was clearly his only vocation, and those Spider-Suits couldn’t have been cheap. Is it possible that Spidey had an eBay business on the side? Why does Willem Dafoe keep appearing in these things if he died at the end of the first movie? And would it even be conceivable for Peter not to know that Mary Jane’s Broadway debut (a) got shelled by the reviewers, and (b) resulted in her getting fired from the role? I mean, come on.

And don’t think that the other summer blockbusters will deliver you from the abominable black hole that was Spiderman 3. Pirates of the Caribbean — despite featuring Johnny Depp marauding around acting like Keith Richards for a hundred and twenty minutes and Keith Richards marauding around acting like himself for ten minutes — was a disappointment. Evan Almighty was the most expensive comedy of all time, and it happens to be aggressively unfunny because its producers forgot that you can’t make a movie funny by throwing money at it. Also, Evan Almighty is a biblical story. The Bible is many things, but funny it is not. Die Hard 4 was actually okay, but it suffered from the problems that typically plague big-budget, high-concept action movies, in that it really was embarrassingly bad whenever Bruce Willis wasn’t doing something violent or threatening to “kick somebody’s a—.” Transformers has all of the problems of Die Hard 4, except instead of Bruce Willis, the audience is supposed to root for the kid who used to be on Even Stevens on the Disney Channel.

On the other hand, there are a few movies that out this summer that are supposedly not insults to the talking picture. Ratatouille, by all accounts, is a charming gem of animation which no one will be interested in seeing because they don’t have any idea how to pronounce the title. And Knocked Up, I can say from experience, is pants-wettingly funny. But that’s about it. There’s really not much else out there.
It seems to me that movie studios are just making movies for the sake of squeezing a few bucks out of the American people. I guess that studios are solely interested in making movies that are either adaptations or sequels (so the audience already knows who the characters are and what to expect the movie will be about) or whose plots are explainable in one sentence, two if the second sentence is “Hilarity ensues.” For example, even the plot of Knocked Up, which I adored, follows these rules that I arbitrarily just made up, because here is that film’s plot: “A beautiful young woman with a promising future is impregnated by a good-natured slacker with no imaginable future. Hilarity ensues.” So my question is this: Are big-budget flicks even worth it any more? Can we as a nation resist the elaborate advertising campaigns we are subjected to every summer and not go see movies that we know are going to be bad and yet go see anyway? Please?

And one other thing, while we’re on the subject of movies. It baffles me that after being nominated for an Oscar and being able to pick any role he could have ever hoped for, Eddie Murphy went and made Norbit. The same man who once made the movie Coming to America is also responsible for Norbit.

How does that happen? I just wanted to get that off my chest. Have a good two weeks, I’ll see you Friday after next.

Bonnaroo!

By Drew Millard

This weekend, I was at Bonnaroo. What is Bonnaroo, you ask? Show of hands: how many of my readers were at Woodstock? Maybe I should change the question. How many of my readers have heard of Woodstock? That’s better. Now imagine Woodstock, only with better sound, just as many hippies, almost as many drugs, no bathing, and ten stages with musical acts that run the gamut from Bluegrass to Gospel to Rock n’ Roll to Punk Rock to Country to Reggae to Jazz to Blues to Rap to Pop, with a few comedians thrown in. That’s Bonnaroo.

I know what you’re thinking. Actually, I don’t. But I’m mildly sure that one of my readers’ questions about the opening paragraph of this column would be, “So how high did Drew get this weekend?”

The answer, of course, is really high. But not on drugs, on the music! That, and sleep deprivation. Not that I didn’t hear countless conversations like the following:

Hippie 1: So the government, dude, controls the...like…media…man…and…uh (speaker coughs)…there could be, like, an entire universe in that blade of grass, dude….

Hippie 2: Well that’s just, like, your opinion, man. My favorite Dead album was Workingman’s Dead, because, like, Jerry Garcia…is totally awesome.

There were a bunch of people smoking the ol’ Mary Jane. And people were eating mushrooms. And doing LSD. I even saw people smoking opium, which I didn’t even know was a drug anymore (I’m pretty sure its last significant user was either Sherlock Holmes or Mary Todd Lincoln).

Fortunately, there were other things to do at the festival besides look at druggies, as that would have made the place Haight-Asbury in 1967. Believe it or not, some pretty high-profile bands played there. Which bands, you ask? Ever heard of Sting?
Remember the Police, the band that he was in during the early 1980s? They were there. As were the awesomely awesome progressive-metal band Tool (ask any male aged 16 to 23, and he’ll tell you all about them), and the dynamic blues-rock duo The White Stripes, whose guitarist, Jack White, just might be the best relevant guitarist of the day.

There were about ninety-seven other bands on the bill, but in all likelihood, if I listed them all, you would get bored and turn to Pam Stone’s column. So in the interest of not fighting a losing battle, I’ll just tell you my five favorite bands/artists to appear at Bonnaroo.

5. Spoon — an indie-rock band from Austin, Texas, who, if one is in high school and wants to know was being cool sounds like, should be listened to. Their live set made me feel cooler for having watched it. Their notable albums include Gimme Fiction, Kill the Moonlight, and Girls Can Tell.

4. Aesop Rock — a rapper from New York who hated his job so much that he made an album about it (entitled Labor Days) that sold well enough to allow him to quit his job, which I guess was his plan the entire time. Though I don’t like rap all that much, his live set won me over. He gets bonus points for his encore, which was completely improvised. If you like good rap music, his next album, None Shall Pass, comes out this summer.

3. Manu Chao — a French-Born, Spanish-language singer who according to Matthieu Dusselier, Frenchman extraordinaire, is as popular in Europe as John Mayer is in America, and infinitely better. He plays what is essentially a mix between traditional Spanish classical music, reggae, and straight-ahead rock, sharpened with a far-leftist political edge. During his performance, he spoke almost no English, but still managed to draw a crowd of what must have been 20,000 spectators. His next album comes out in August of this year, and judging from the fact that he’s touring in America this summer, will probably contain some English.

2. Wilco — hopefully, a few of my readers have heard of this excellent indie-rock band who, after fifteen or so years of existence (not to mention that they have roots in Uncle Tupelo, one of the first alternative country bands), are becoming somewhat of household name. Their set was consistently astounding, and featured the excellent guitar work of lead guitarist Nels Cline, a relatively recent addition to the band, and the abstract-yet-simple lyrics of frontman Jeff Tweedy. Their best album is titled Summerteeth, and their most recent, entitled Sky Blue Sky, has reached number thirteen on the charts.

1. The Hold Steady — these guys are my favorite band in the universe. They played an hour-and-a-half show that had their smallish but fanatic crowd singing along with frontman Craig Finn’s Beat Poetry-ish lyrics (sample couplet: “There are night when I think that Sal Paradise was right/Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together.”

I can’t really go into much more detail about how awesome The Hold Steady was, other than to say that you really, really need to buy their newest release, entitled Boys and Girls in America, and then send it to me.

Also, since many music fans know and love the Police, I’ll also tell you how their concert was and why it’s not worth spending $500 to see them on their supermassive reunion tour. They’re not that great. Of course, they play the songs competently and almost way that the audience wants to hear them, but they don’t do anything else.
Don’t believe whatever hype you hear, because somewhere along the way, the Police forgot to bring the manic energy that made them great in the first place. To perhaps cater to the Bonnaroo audience, the Police introduced a slower, funkier breakdown in each of their songs, which just didn’t work, probably because every time one of those breakdowns appeared, it was just after the final verse and lasted approximately three minutes, and sounded the same every time. Sting apparently never got the memo that said jamming wasn’t supposed to be rehearsed. Anyway, if you go see them regardless of what I say, it’s none of my business, but I will leave you with a final thought: even at 55, Sting still looks like he could whip my butt.

Goodnight Polk County!

Graduation in the Modern Age

By Drew Millard

Author’s note: By the time the Tryon Daily Bulletin publishes this column, I will be hours away from my high school graduation. This is a big deal in every person’s life, and all of my fellow graduates — myself included — have our unique thoughts and opinions on the moment in which the state of North Carolina deems us fit to enter the real world. Unfortunately, only the top five students in the senior class actually get to give speeches telling their perspectives on how everything has gone. I’m not in the top five, but I have a lot of things to say about our impending graduation, so naturally, I’m going to use today’s column as an opportunity for publishing what is tantamount to my graduation speech:

You know, time has a funny way of sneaking up on you. For four years now, I’ve been thinking that I’d be stuck in high school forever, but now, as I try and gather my thoughts on graduation, it hits me that these four years have gone by way too fast.
This senior year of high school has literally been the best year of my life. I have had more amazing experiences with my fellow seniors than you can shake a stick at, and I know that I don’t just speak for myself when I say that. However, we have to cherish those memories, because things are about to change.

It’s hard to realize that our lives, which were really based around being in high school, are about to change completely as we’re thrust out into the real world. For some of us, the structure that high school offered, letting us know that every day we had somewhere to go where not a lot of work was necessarily done but we still knew that we had a purpose, that structure is gone. We no longer have Mr. Greene to inspire us, Mr. Campbell to impart his wisdom upon us, or Mrs. White to strike fear in our hearts. I think that I speak for us all when I say that I am thoroughly afraid of that woman.

But while that notion that we’re leaving our comfort zones is frightening, not one of my fellow seniors can tell me that they aren’t even just a little bit ready to move on.

The exciting thing about the next step is that we can do, within reason, whatever the heck we want. And we will, whether that means moving out of the house, going to college, getting a job, or sitting around the house playing videogames and watching reruns of South Park.

There will be, after graduation, very few people left to tell us what to do. Now that, my friends, is exciting.

We are on the cusp of unlimited potential. The world is just waiting for us to go out there and tame it. On the other hand, when we wake up tomorrow, we will all feel pretty much the same. Graduating high school does not make you an expert in every field known to mankind, not that we wouldn’t like to think so. These days, a high school diploma doesn’t get you much. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. In life, there are no benchmarks for success. There will be ups, downs, and in-betweens, and the only thing we can do is embrace the challenge.

Now, I’m going to thank a few teachers and faculty members who have helped me immensely along the way. Mrs. Kathy Brown, Mrs. Dawn Forward, Mr. Buck Preston, Coach Lennox “Rock” Charles, Coach Will Pack, Coach Steven Pack, Mrs. Mary Feagan, Coach Jeff Wilson, Mrs. Betsy Copolillo, Mrs. Bessie Goodwin, Mrs. Tawana Weicker, Mr. Jerry Suarez, Mr. Robert “Douggie Fresh” Campbell, and Mrs. Laura White: you have all, whether you know it or not, taught me countless lessons, not just in your subjects, but in life, and I wish now that I had done more in my time as a student to show how much you all have meant to me. So thank you.

In conclusion, I leave you with a piece of Campbell wisdom: “Respect the ladies.” Always remember that, friends. Always.

Here ends the speech, as at this point, I will be thrown off the stage.

May I have your attention please

By Drew Millard

Well, after having watched the first of many Democratic and Republican debates, I have concluded that there are no suitable candidates for President. Not that the debates helped, of course. The questions posed to the Democrats ranged from easy (Name your favorite Supreme Court Justice — Ginsburg!) to ridiculously easy (On a scale from one to ten, how bad is the Iraq war? — Eleven!) to gimmes (On a scale from Gary Busey to Angelina Jolie, how concerned are you about Global Warming? — Matt Damon!).

And don’t even get me started on the Republicans. All in all, they referenced Ronald Reagan (whose library was lent out for the debate) and his politics a total of nineteen times, which is about fifteen more times than they would have mentioned him had Nancy Reagan not been sitting in the audience.

A moment that really struck me as just bizarre was when John McCain glared at the camera and vowed to “follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell.” Really, I think that he should stop at the River Styx. That, and Rudy Giuliani mentioned that he was mayor of New York six times that night.

The softballs lobbed to the Republicans were just as easy as the ones asked of the Dems. Sample question: Which is worse: abortion or a chicken salad sandwich? All answered “Abortion,” except for Giuliani, who said, “Eh, well I’m gluten-intolerant, so I’ll have so say the sandwich.”

This is beyond intolerable. If any of these candidates from either end of the political spectrum win the presidency, then the entire United States is doomed to World War III, and we all know it. Which is where I come in. I’d like to announce my candidate for the presidency of the United States. I’ll be running as an independent, as I’m not technically registered to vote and am not technically allowed to run due to my age. Still, I’d like you to consider me.

I know that a presidential candidate’s opinions on the issues are almost as important as stuff like hair, teeth, and whether or not any of my relatives has their own brand of beer, so I’m going to tell you where I stand on all of the “hot-button issues.” So, well, here goes.

I think that Medicare and Social Security are vastly more complex issues than the American people should have to deal with, so I would eliminate both of them. People don’t seem to like taxes either, so I’d stop making people pay them. All homeless people from here on out get dancing lessons so they can finally stop being useless bums and turn into endearing vagabonds, hearkening back to a simpler, happier America that never actually existed. Millard Fillmore would be on the seven-dollar bill, which I would create. As for abortion, same-sex marriage, terrorism, and the war in Iraq — eh. I’m sure they’ll all work themselves out.

How I spent my spring vacation

By Drew Millard

Okay kids, story time. Here’s the scene: I was staying in Myrtle Beach a couple of weeks ago in a beach house with a bunch of my friends. I won’t lie to you, it was pretty sweet. Let me just say that you have not lived until you have tried to swim in the seventy-degree waters of the Atlantic Ocean, or attempted (in vain) to haggle with a foreign man over the price of a Grateful Dead t-shirt, or lost money getting hustled by a fifteen-year old pool shark from New Jersey who may or may not have been named Sanchez, or watched Borat at least once a day for five days straight. Some may disagree with me here, but I digress.

Point is, the night before my group was to depart, Lewis, Reed, and myself left our golf clubs out in the open carport under our beach house. When we woke up, mine and Lewis’s clubs were nowhere to be found. Missing. Kaput. 86’d. The clubs were as gone as F. Scott Fitzgerald after a night on the town with Ernest Hemingway. So it goes.

Now I know what you’re wondering, and yes, our clubs were stolen. Oh, and the thieves were kind enough to leave some of my stuff behind: a dirty sock, a golf ball, and my right golf shoe. I can only assume that they took only the right shoe because the thief was a one-footed golfer.

Upon the realization that our clubs had been, we called the security force at the neighborhood where we were staying. These fine gentlemen told us that (a) we were dumb for leaving our clubs out in the open, (b) the clubs had probably been stolen by a meth addict from New York, and (c) these days, society has no morals. I can find no fault with any of these statements. The security officer then called the police, and an officer was dispatched to see us immediately.

This was the most physically threatening police officer I have ever seen. He was about six foot five, weighing two hundred and twenty pounds of pure masculinity. He looked like the type of guy who played football in high school and upon graduation, entered the police academy so he could keep hitting people.

He asked us where the clubs had been, what had been left, and for a description of the situation as we saw it. He then proceeded to ask us for an exact inventory of what had been taken.

See, this was a problem.

If you are a golfer, then you know that I couldn’t have just given him a description of the clubs and leave it at that. You know that I had to get into brands, talk about all my little headcovers for the woods, the exact specifications of each and every club, the type of shafts, distinguishing marks, and of course the length of the putter.

Obviously, this man was not a golfer.

Irked as our police officer was, he continued to serve the people and take down my ever-expanding inventory of lost items. He seemed okay with it, until I told him that I was finished, and then said, “Oh yeah, and there was another thing. One golf shoe.”

At this point, the guy kind of lost it. Actually, I said that wrong. At this point, the officer wanted to lose it, because there was a seventeen-year old idiot who was pretty much asking to get his golf clubs stolen wanting to add that — in addition to almost a thousand dollars in merchandise already laid out in enough detail to choke an ox — one and only one golf shoe was stolen from him. Point is, the officer made a motion with his pen that let me know exactly how exasperated he was. You’ve seen it before, that little tic that someone does whenever they want to slam their writing utensil into the gap between Elton John’s teeth, but they can’t because their status requires them to carry themselves with an air of calm at all times. That gesture where the pen-slamming motion starts, but all that ever happens is the person just ends up setting their pen down for a moment and then resumes their writing as though nothing happened, but actually, they will never be able to love or trust or even be wholeheartedly nice to you ever again. That’s the one I got.

I quickly finished giving my description of the clubs, told the guy that I didn’t want to come to the club thief’s (if they catch him) bail hearing, and didn’t need to be notified upon the date of the alleged club thief’s alleged release from the alleged prison that he would hypothetically go to if he were dumb enough to get caught. I then fled the scene and let the officer talk to Lewis, who is more of a “people person” than I am and knows when not to babble.

The officer told him that we were the victims of grand larceny in that the value of the items stolen from us was in excess of one thousand dollars. That really didn’t phase me, but the one thing about the entire incident that kind of hurt my feelings was the fact that Lewis claims that on the part of the police report asking whether the victim had been using drugs, the officer put “unknown” for me and “no” for him. Yeah, well, that’s just, like, his opinion, man.

What have I learned from this experience? Well actually, a lot. I’ve learned that one should never leave valuable stuff out in the open (duh), the police will always help you no matter how much you annoy them (duh), and I sometimes act like I’m on drugs.

So seriously, guys. If you see a dude with one foot, a Polk County High School golf bag with “D. Millard” embroidered on it, and a set of clubs that perfectly matches the specifications that should be on display at the Horry County Police Department, fight him. He’s a thief.

‘I think I’ve got the black lung, Pop*’

By Drew Millard

There are many things in this universe of which I do not approve. Cats, for example. They are poisoning our society. As is the Ford Mustang. That red flashing sign put up by McDonald’s in Columbus a few years ago falls into the same category, as I believe it is slowly giving me epilepsy and probably ocular cancer. I suppose that I should lump cigarettes into the same category as the sign. I do not, however, disapprove of cigarettes for many of the same reasons that the vast majority of society does. Sure, they slowly kill you and make it harder to breathe/run/avoid cancer, but they also affect the ways that society perceives a person. It seems to me that if a person is a smoker, society brands them as amoral. While I realize that smoking isn’t exactly helping an old woman cross the street, a smoker isn’t really hurting anybody other than themselves, you know?

Which brings me to America’s favorite upstart Presidential candidate, Barack Obama. Obama has recently outed himself as a smoker, eliciting criticisms from many in both the press and, er, not the press. Newsweek even went so far as to run a feature on Obama’s habit, speculating on both how the public will perceive Obama now that he has admitted to smoking and with what method Obama — who has since committed to quitting — will use to break his habit.

This is, of course, patently ridiculous. The fact that Barack Obama occasionally smokes is nobody’s business other than Barack Obama’s. And yet people are affected by his choice to smoke. Even my dad, a (nearly) rational individual, said that immediately after he found out about Obama’s smoking, he found his opinions of the man shift, solely because the man lights up. The aforementioned Newsweek article made the point that many previous presidents have smoked. Even Bill Clinton smoked cigars. I guess it’s somehow different because people like Sigmund Freud and Bill Clinton smoked cigars, and people like Britney Spears smoke cigarettes.

Who really cares? It’s personal choice. In this day and age, everybody knows that inhaling cigarette smoke is not as healthy as inhaling oxygen, so the fact that a person starts smoking is their own responsibility.

Obama is an adult. He can do what he wants. It’s not like his positions on the issues have changed. His ability to lead is not compromised because he smokes. He is still as intelligent as he ever was. My mom still thinks he’s cute. You and I are not affected in any tangible way, shape, or form because a man who might be President in two years happens currently to be craving a Camel. It’s none of our business.

(* The quote above is a line from the movie Zoolander. It is spoken by the title character after just one day working in a coal mine.)

I phoned this one in

By Drew Millard

I assume that in this day and age, the vast majority of all eight of my regular readers have mobile phones. This is good, because I’m about to write about them.

Looking at your cell-phone, you can easily see one way of communicating with people: through making a phone call. But what if you have bad news? What if you have to say something to someone but they’re too annoying to call? What if you’re in a situation where you are unable to call someone due to the noise level or a wish not to make a lot of noise?

That’s where text messages come in. A text message is exactly what it sounds like: it is a message of pure text that your cell phone can send and receive. If you look under your cell phone’s Menu, you should quickly be able to find something to select that says “messaging.” From there, you have reached your text message home, which is styled somewhat after the way email works. You are able to send and receive messages, which you type with your keypad by pressing the number that corresponds to the letter that it represents. Some phones even figure out what word you are trying to type, which can save you time and headaches.

Text messages are awesome. I say this because I have just recently begun a love affair with them. They’re a method of having low-grade communication with a person. Is someone annoying, and yet you still need to speak with them? Then send them a text message, so they can’t talk back unless they send you a text message in reply, which you can simply ignore. Communication made easy.

Text messages are quite neutral. I don’t think anyone has ever gotten more than either mildly excited or slightly annoyed to receive a text message, which means that “texting” is an excellent method to deal with information that is not quite important enough to warrant the intrusion that a phone call brings, but is still vital enough to demand instant communication.

I think that this concept can be best explained by letting you read a few of the latest text messages that I have sent:

1. I have no idea. I am currently craving a bagel.

2. Freeeeeepow!

3. You sadden us. Make money, make money.

4. Ingles or his brother BiLo.

5. Word.

6. Reno 911 the movie comes out next weekend. Yes.

7. Sweet.

8. I hope your grandfather is well.

9. I’m probably skipping the pep rally.

So as you can see, text messages are both fun and trivial, and function best within the constructs of correct and proper grammar without the use of conjunctions. Also, text messages allow you to be silly and get away with it, because none of my text messages have ever elicited the question, “Why did you just send me that?”

I guess this is more of an argument for the questionable sanity of my friends than an argument for the innocuousness of the text message as a greater whole, but whatever. You get the point.

The column that might get me fired

By Drew Millard

War… what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Now for those of you who think that I just ripped that out of a song title, you’re right. However, Edwin Starr was on to something. Why are we in Iraq? Are we trying to save ourselves from terrorists? Are we there to “finish the job?” Do we feel like we need to retaliate against Al Qaeda for the September 11 attacks? Do we have to save the Iraqi people? Or do we just need to show them durned Muslims who the boss is? The answer to all of these questions, of course, is, “Uh……”

Now I know that those of you who read this column on an at least semi-regular basis can tell pretty easily that I lean quite emphatically to the political left. I am not, however, one of those smelly vegans who want to save the universe, one Rwandan genocide at a time. I try to think with my head, and most of the time, I find myself being quite open-minded and pacifistic. Ergo, I am anti-war. Now, some of you may be tempted to put down this newspaper in disgust, but I urge you, please do not. I’m not dumb enough to propose conspiracy theories involving Haliburton and the Military-Industrial Complex. But some things do make you wonder…

Why are we in Iraq? You know what? I don’t know. I was thirteen at the time this war first started, and the first time I realized that some people had a problem with going to war was during the Oscar telecast of that year when filmmaker Michael Moore was booed off the stage because he used his acceptance speech as a platform for making anti-war remarks. So to say that I didn’t have a grasp of what was actually happening at that time is vast understatement. When I tried to actually find out why we went to Iraq, all I could find was partisan rhetoric from both the left and the right of the political spectrum. So after trying to get both sides of the story, I guess we invaded Iraq for a number of reasons which include (but are definitely not limited to) national security, humanitarian action to defeat an evil dictator, oil, a US foothold in the Middle East, the tumultuous aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction, a pre-emptive strike on Iraq before Saddam got too bomb-happy and decided to take potshots at Washington DC, and of course, the Chicago Bears. In fact, it might have even been a good idea to invade at the time, but since we have invaded, we have made several serious mistakes, which many other people more intelligent and more qualified than I have either attacked or explained.

But now that America is in Iraq, what are we to do? Without the guiding hands of US forces, the country would be in shambles. The Sunnis and Shiites are at each other’s throats, and they’re both looking to our army for protection from the other side. But at the same time, the Sunnis are trying to attack the Shiites, and the Shiites are trying to attack the Sunnis, all when we’re not looking. So say that the US just packs up and leaves tomorrow, taking all of our troops out of Iraq. Then the Shiites declare jihad on the Sunnis and vice versa, and the population of Iraq gets decimated by civil war. So the United States, unfortunately, seems to be stuck in Iraq until further notice. Fun, right?

I have no idea how the United States might be able to extricate itself from this quagmire. My only hope about this is that the government doesn’t reinstitute the draft, and the only thing I’m happy about is that I’m not the one who has to deal with all of this mess. That, of course, would be our President and his successor.

The super bonus

By Drew Millard

Another year, another Super Bowl. The game started out excitingly enough; the Bears jumped out to an early lead and proceeded to forget how to play football shortly thereafter, while Peyton Manning, easily the most boring major sports figure of the 21st century, predictably played predictably well, and in the most predictable moment of the night, was named Super Bowl MVP. I think that the issue that spelled the Bears’ demise that everyone in the press corps wrote them off to the point that when Chicago starting playing well, the team was so surprised that they just let the Colts have their way. That, and Rex Grossman threw approximately seventeen interceptions, proving once and for all that the best quarterback on the Chicago Bears is not named Rex Grossman.

But I have a confession to make: I hate football. In fact, the only reason I watch the Super Bowl at all is for the halftime show. I think that the halftime show really shows how much progress our culture has made. For example, in 2004, Kid Rock performed wearing the American Flag as a shirt, showing that America was hyperpatriotic and wanted a Bud Light. Soon after Kid Rock left the stage, Janet Jackson had a wardrobe malfunction, and America realized that it needed to tone things down a bit. So in 2005, the promoters got the benignly entertaining Paul McCartney who probably thinks that “Football” is played with feet kicking a sphere. The next year, we made the transition from one of the members of the greatest band of all time (The Beatles) to all of the surviving members of the greatest Rock N’ Roll band of all time (The Rolling Stones). Unfortunately, our timing was off, and the Stones delivered a geriatric set that reminded everybody—well, me at least—that the Stones could have played at the first Super Bowl in 1969.

So after a mediocre few years of halftime shows, whoever at CBS was in charge of the halftime show said, “To Heck with it, let’s call in Prince.”

And call in Prince they did indeed. The question that endures in my mind is this: Why Prince? I mean, I know the guy’s a genius and everything, but he hasn’t been popular since the early 90s. That, and he wears blouses and head-scarves.

That said, whoever booked him made the right decision. He was amazing. To jog your memory, he first played one of his own songs, and then moved on to a medley of popular songs that included the oft-covered “Proud Mary” and “All Along the Watchtower.” He then played “The Best of You,” which is a song by the Foo Fighters that he vastly improved, if I may say. He then closed the set with a shortened version of his signature song “Purple Rain,” during which he erected a curtain and suggestively played his guitar like it was — both physically and musically — an extension of his own body.

Which brings me to another thought. Prince is one of the best guitarists alive today. He played like it was second nature, fret-tapping and gesticulating wildly as if at any moment, both he and his guitar were going to explode, so he better get all of the notes out as soon as possible. My English teacher said that he thought Prince was doing his best Jimi Hendrix impersonation, but I think that he was only half-right. Prince might have been trying to be Jimi Hendrix, but he was also striving to emulate Elvis. Just look at the way he dressed, in his over-the-top blue and orange suit, and the way he sang Proud Mary, an Elvis live staple.

When it’s all said and done, Prince is undeniably The Man. What other dude could wear a suit like that on national TV and have penned a song called “Purple Rain” and still be considered a pillar of masculinity? Exactly.

Wait and see, or make things happen

By Drew Millard

During a semi-long drive the other day, I had an existential crisis. Am I, I thought to myself, in control of my own destiny? Am I behind the driver’s seat of life? Am I, in a compound-word, self-actualized? To find out, I turned off my CD player and listened to the radio. I was unpleasantly surprised. I must have spent half an hour searching for a half-decent radio station, only to find that there are none. So I listened to some random pop station and was miserable.
This is no way to live. This simple experience led me to a realization. There are two types of people on this earth: those who wait and see what will happen, and those who make things happen. And there are two tests to determine whether a person is in the first group or the second group.

The self-actualized, forward-thinking man (or woman or hermaphrodite) will always listen to a CD in his car, because he understands that the only way to begin controlling his own destiny is by controlling what comes into his ears. Be it the classical stylings of Brahms or the classic rock of the Rolling Stones, real men (or women or hermaphrodites) will fight to the death for their right to listen to what they want. Putting in a CD shows that one is making a proactive decision and taking his future into his own hands.

Meanwhile, those who listen to the radio are weak. These heathens don’t care what they’re listening to, only that there is music on. People such as this never get anything done, only complain and change the station. Now, I know that the argument can be made by some that radio-listeners want some variety coming into their ears, but that’s why God created the CD-R, or as I like to call it, the burnable CD.

The burnable CD allows you to pick eighty minutes worth of music to play in your car. Enough said. But credence must be given to the location where one travels within one’s self-actualized compartment of music. Really, everybody — even the self-actualized — have to go places they don’t want to go. But they can, ninety percent of the time, control which restaurants they patronize, and therefore choose what food will enter their bodies.

The only place that allows one to eat and be truly free is the Chinese Buffet. Why, you may ask, would such an establishment, famous for its endless variety of food and questionably food-like accessories, be a key in the establishment of independence?

Because. Some things just work that way, and this is one of them. The Chinese Buffet is (a) sinfully delicious, (b) delightfully full of variety, and (c) delectably cheap. If one has limited funds, as any good self-actualized man does (jobs prevent the independent from doing what they want), then you must eat there or risk normalization.

The truly self-actualized have complete control. This is why they listen to CD’s instead of the radio, eat at Chinese Buffets instead of regular restaurants, and will one day rule the world. This is the unquestionable truth. If you have a problem with it, talk to me. I’ll be at the Chinese Buffet in Forest City.

The Postmodern Age

By Drew Millard

As you read this right now, you are in the present. But the present is fleeting. There, that sentence is now in the past. Sometimes, my columns don’t get published until upwards of two or three months after I write them, so they’re usually not relevant in the least. So with that in mind, I am going to attempt to predict what will be happening on the date of this column’s publication, way back from the past of September 30, 2006. For every prediction that is true, I think you should give me a dollar. I’m not mandating this, I’m just really, really hoping for a handout.

Prediction One: There is still a war in Iraq. I’m afraid this whole Iraq situation might be morphing into a Vietnam-like travesty, which we won’t be able to get out of until Jimmy Carter becomes president. Which leads me to prediction number two.

Prediction Two: Jimmy Carter is running for President in 2008. The youth of America are clamoring to be out of the war in Iraq, and the only man with the wherewithal to answer their call and get us out of there is an 86-year octogenarian with a peanut farm and more Billy Beer than you can shake a stick at.

Prediction Three: The Number One Movie in America is a gritty crime drama starring Justin Timberlake. As of this writing, I am listening to pop singer Justin Timerlake’s newish single “SexyBack.” It is either the greatest song ever, or the worst. There is no middle ground. Right now, I am prone to subscribe to my first sentiment. But after listening to it perhaps five thousand times, I, as a side prediction, think that in January, I will hate “SexyBack.”

Prediction Four: Charles Taylor retained his seat in Congress. In the race for Congress, the incumbent never loses. That’s just the reality of the situation here.

Prediction Five: There is a cloned human named Dolly. Personally, I’m optimistic about this one. If we can send a man to the moon, then we should definitely be able to clone a human. This is just general principle.

Prediction Six: There was a White Christmas. Since this column is being printed in January, I can make some predictions about the holidays. We all gained ten pounds from the onslaught of Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years Eve coming in rapid succession, and since it has been unseasonably cold as of late September, I honestly think that’s it’s going to snow like there’s no tomorrow in the future. Of course, you’re reading this in the future, and so you probably know better than this column.

Prediction Seven: I have either (1) wrecked my car, (2) been eaten by a manta ray, or (3) bought Led Zeppelin II. I don’t know. I just have a feeling about this one.

Prediction Eight: Global warming will have increased at such a rapid rate that the world’s supply of nuclear bombs will have spontaneously detonated, sending the world into a downwardly spiraling nuclear holocaust. In which case, you won’t actually be reading this column, as you will no longer exist.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go light the menorah.

I’ve had it with Christmas

By Drew Millard

That’s it. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with this Christmas cheer. If I have to hear another version of “Silver Bells,” I might have to strangle myself with a bough of mistletoe. If I hear one more person wish me a Merry Christmas, I’m going to beat them with a roll of wrapping paper.
I’m sorry if that sounds overtly aggressive, but that’s only because it is. The crass commercialism that is Christmas has gotten to me lately for some reason, and I’m not sure why. You may remember that in a recent column, I wrote how I loved Christmas music, and the holiday season in general. I’m afraid to say that I might have reneged on that opinion. I guess that having to deal with the whole spirit of Christmas for two months instead of one has just kind of gotten to me. It’s become grating. Too much of a good thing, I guess.

The Christmas Spirit, in all its grandeur and glory, is dead, and it has been replaced by the Ghost of Christmas Commercialism. I guess I can best describe it in the context of the Family Christmas Movie. Every year, some formerly gigantic Hollywood star (read: Steve Martin) who used to have some sort of artistic integrity (Okay, maybe the word “integrity” isn’t right — just not the kind of star who you would think would be in a Christmas movie) stars in some sort of kid-friendly holiday flick that will inevitably make a hundred million dollars and will also inevitably stink. The Hollywood star has essentially sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the right to be the one who takes money from millions of parents this year. This year, the big stars are Danny DeVito and Tim Allen (for what seems like his eighth Christmas movie). Danny DeVito, the same man who directed Death to Smoochy — an R-rated movie about a children’s TV show host who decides to kill his replacement — is now starring in some movie called Deck the Halls, which is about Christmas lights or something. I have no idea, even though I saw the preview.

Let me put it this way. I, personally, am always looking for a reason to celebrate. If I had the power to make every week a different event, I would in a flash. But I would not dwell on whatever awesomeness I had created. I would not build it up for two months. Because Christmas day is always disappointing, isn’t it? Always a let-down. As a kid, your new bike never goes fast enough, the big toy is never as cool as it looks in the commercial, and you never get the pony that you wanted, and if you actually did get the pony, then that too is a disappointment, because you then have to muck out horse stalls until the day you die.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. I’m playing Santa for the kids at the hospital.

It’s all about Christmas

By Drew Millard

Some people say life is about love. Others say it’s about being content with who you are. A few coldhearted souls say life is about money.

But I have good news. All of those people who say those things are full of it. Life is about Christmas.

How do I know this? The day after Halloween, they officially started playing Christmas music on the radio.

Yes, it’s that time of the year, and it keeps coming sooner and sooner. Next year, you’ll be hearing “Silver Bells” just about when I head off to college. And I love it. Nothing shows more holiday spirit than playing Christmas music as soon as possible. Back when I was really really young, I can remember that holiday tunes were never really played until after Thanksgiving. Man, what a jip. I’m super-pumped that somebody decided that Christmas unequivocally superseded Thanksgiving, therefore giving it priority over all other holidays in the universe.

I adore the fact that Christmas music exists, because it (1) shows that people care enough about this holiday to make a soundtrack for it, which is always nice, and (2) forces my friends to listen to artists I like.

I am seventeen. I have delved into my mind many a time in search of material for this column, but I don’t think that I’ve ever told you that I — unlike many teenagers — like to listen to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. Well, I do. These men happen to have made some of the greatest music of all time—more importantly, they also have made some of the greatest Christmas music of all time. Ironically, my generation seems to acknowledge this group’s latter contribution to the musical lexicon, as opposed to the former. In plain English, that means that everybody listens to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole during this time of year, but only their Christmas music. Right now my friends are listening to the artists I like, and they will cease on Dec. 26. Life goes on.

Christmas is clearly the greatest holiday in the universe. There are those who criticize it for fostering a spirit of commercialism and greed, but they’re missing the point. Christmas isn’t about that, just like life isn’t about love. It’s all about the music.

Welcome to Web 2.0

By Drew Millard

Some of you are reading this in the newspaper. Some of you are reading this online. If you are reading the newspaper, congratulations. You are clinging to the old world that I so dearly love, and kind of wish that I was a retrospective part of. That's one of the disadvantages of being young – I want to see what life was like when it was harder, but I literally can't comprehend the universe as any different than it is right now. I can't imagine what a world without shampoo must have been like; conversely, I cannot even begin to fathom what a world with a living Kurt Cobain, a celebrity who died no more than twelve years ago, was like. There is a part of me that wants to experience that old life, but unfortunately, that me is being jettisoned in the name of technology.

Now let us assume that you are reading this on the web, more specifically, on my Tryon Daily Bulletin blog. (for those of you who are not, but do have access to a computer with an internet connection, kindly use your internet browser to
navigate to http://tdbmodernage.blogspot.com, so that my point can be more effectively made). Congratulations. You are officially participating in Web 2.0.

What is Web 2.0, you ask? It is what it is, and "what it is" is simply the idea that the internet should be interactive rather than reactive. Pioneers in this field are websites such as www.myspace.com, the world's most popular social networking site (for those of you wondering what a social networking website is, I'll explain
in a couple paragraphs.); www.wikipedia.com (the world's largest online encyclopedia), and www.blogger.com, the website with which you are reading my words, assuming that you did what I asked and went to my blog.

Now, blogger.com is not just a website where content is posted by a select number of people.

Blogger.com is a web site where one can, through just a couple of easy steps, publish their writing, usually in the form of a journal. However, if someone were so inclined, they could literally publish anything, from pictures to videos to their thoughts on how Kafka would be interpreted had he been known to touch children.

The second website that I should discuss is Wikipedia. This web site is essentially an online encyclopedia, available to be read by anyone in the world, free of charge. The cool part is that in addition to being read by anyone in the world, it can also be edited by anyone in the world.

Now does this work? Yes. More importantly, how does this work-what guarantees that some hack with an opinion won't just fabricate information and pass it off as true?
The answer is this: Wikipedia is founded upon the belief that all people are inherently good, and that if somebody doesn't know what they're talking about in regards to a subject, then they won't post something about it. Of course, Wikipedia is not perfect. Those who are inclined to post on Wikipedia tend to be more interested in the history of Star Trek than, say, the life and times of Millard Fillmore.

And last but certainly not least, I shall discuss the beast. MySpace. If you are not familiar, www.myspace.com is a website that allows its users – usually teenagers – to create their own personal web page, and share information with the world about who they feel like they are.

Many, I think, consider their MySpace as an extension of their own physical bodies, and treat them as such, providing them with routine maintenance, giving them aesthetic changes, etc. In addition to making their own profiles, the site's users can comment upon other users' profiles.

Many times, I have seen the accretion of comments turn into an unspoken contest, a test in fake human interaction.

As of this writing, MySpace has approximately one hundred million people using it – that's not an exaggeration. MySpace is the biggest web site in the world (I think), and those who do use it need to remember that what they post there can be viewed by everyone in the entire universe, assuming the aliens now have access to the Internet.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go check my Myspace.

Seventeen and clueless

By Drew Millard

It seems like the older I get, the more I realize that I'm not a kid anymore. Yeah, I know that in and of itself, this expository sentence is deeply simplistic and redundant, but that doesn't make it any less true. Right now, I'm a senior in high school. I have no idea how I got this way. It honestly feels like no time has passed since my freshman year ended.

There are guys on the school soccer team, my fellow seniors, who I look at, and think, "Oh my goodness. This dude is in no way similar to me; he's practically graduated – he shaves four times a week, for cripes' sake!" And you know what? If I don't shave for a week, I end up having a homeless-man beard, just like him. We're all alike.

I have to go to college in a year. I really can't wait. But I'm afraid of the whole "growing up" thing, I think. The way I see it, you turn eighteen, then you graduate, then you go to college, then you graduate again, and then that's where it gets fuzzy. What am I supposed to do after that?

As morbid at it seems, I really wouldn't mind spontaneously combusting the day after my college graduation. At least I'd have a definite goal in life.

But we're in the now. I'm kind of astonished that I'm in the class of the oldest students in Polk County High School – I feel like I shouldn't be this old. When I was a freshman, the seniors were terrifying. They were an unknown danger, lurking in the shadows, just waiting for a freshman to yell at for being in their way. I remember that a lot of the seniors smoked cigarettes – I don't think that I know any of my fellow seniors who smoke – and drove fast cars and ate fast food and had jobs and tried to generally avoid being at home as much as possible. Well, I've got four out of five down. Oh my... it seems that I'm as old as I thought I was after all.

It's just that, in a few years, I'm going to have to get a job, you know? And not just a job waiting tables or doing grunt work – like a "real job" job, one in the outside world, not Polk County. The thought of leaving Polk County terrifies me. What do people do for money when they grow up? I dunno, maybe paint stuff? Dance? Remember to put the right cover sheet on TPS reports? Bowl? All I know is that rug really tied the room together. Will I be saying this kind of things at the age of thirty? I sure hope not.

I guess that I don't really know what to do with my life. But the good news is I don't have to know. I'm 17 and clueless, and I just might be content with staying that way a little longer.