Thacant

you tell me!

A lot of things go by different names depending where you are. Is it a bubbler or a water fountain? Trash or rubbish? Soda or Pop? This one might just take the cake, though. Sub? Grinder? Hoagie? Hero?

Here are the originals…christmas tree, the phone call (maybe the best one), make your mother proud, and I’m pretty sure it all started with Jackie and Debra….

Unlike many people who live off-campus, I walk to class everyday. My route brings me past Farm Road pond, across Grant Egbert Boulevard (GEB) and through the Park School parking lot. But the crosswalk on GEB has been giving me a lot of trouble all year. You know those signs – “must stop for pedestrians in crosswalk”? There’s one near the Gardens and Emerson, one up in the Terraces, but none on my (and many other students’) route up to campus. But the same rules apply: Pedestrians have the right of way in the crosswalk.

I’ve noticed many fellow pedestrians are reluctant to cross the street when a car is coming. They’ll wait for all cars to pass, then advance. I guess I’m audacious when I don’t break stride going from the path next to the pond to the parking lot. Doing this has caused a lot of drivers to honk at me, swerve and give me the finger, or get their car spit on.

Driver’s ignorance has made me so upset and fearful for my own safety that I’ve considered stopping at Public Safety and requesting that a sign be put in the crosswalk. Then, I realized, I’m a driver too. I stop for pedestrians in crosswalks – hell, I’m one myself most of the time. Calling attention to the intersection of Farm and GEB wouldn’t be helping anyone – it would just be getting more drivers in trouble on a campus where, when you’re behind the wheel, you better hope a campus cop isn’t anywhere near and that he has no reason to pull you over.

What’s going on here? The ignorant drivers aren’t the problem. And besides, it’s fun, as a pedestrian, to exercise control over a car.

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.  Sorry again for taking so long between posts, but I plan on getting back to my roots of that neon-colored stapled newsletter and bringing some more rants to the masses.

Yesterday I came across a documentary called “Don’t You Forget About Me.”  This was a documentary made about the impact of John Huhges teen movies in the 80s by four canadian “filmmakers” (and I use that term loosely) who set out to find and speak to the great John Hughes and fail miserably.  While I watched this documentary and enjoyed most of it, I found myself noticing how the four producers must have been film kids in college.  Certain traits just pop out.  As a TV kid (a television-radio major) often times we get lumped in with film kids, and often times we take exception to it.  It’s not that I have anything against film kids, I have some good friends who are film kids, it’s just that film kids and tv kids are quite different. (How many times did I say kid in that sentence? I was aiming for five)  In my opinion (again, this is probably a tad biased, and all film kids please do not take offense), film majors seem to be more pretentious, more “filmy” (if that makes sense) and with an unwarranted sense of superiority.  For some reason film kids seem to look down on the tv kids as not as serious and think the work they produce is better.  In some cases sure, but I know that this semester, tv kids produced some great work (Check out Almost College, seriously, you will not regret it…ictv.org/Almostcollege)….This leads me back to my thesis that film kids are just a little more out there, and a little pretentious in the way they carry themselves and approach their work. Often times over my years in Park I have turned to a fellow TV student and said “I’m so glad I’m not a film kid.”  And I am.  I think that TV and FIlm kids are inherently different.  We are more understated in our creativity and love of entertainment.  We are more down to earth, we approach things differently, and maybe, just maybe, do not take it AS seriously.  You can walk through park and see a film kid and KNOW he or she is a film kid.  They just have that way about them.  It’s just the way it is.  Maybe I have just been around Park too much this semester.  Who knows.  Either way, Happy new year to all TV kids, all film kids, and everyone in general.

Something that I did not know, the original New Yorker cat is called the Eustace Tilley.

the original

I fall in love with the New Yorker on a daily basis via David Denby’s writing, surprise visits from David Sedaris and of course their cartoons. They are having a contest of sorts for people to craft their own Eustace Tilley.

You can read about the Eustace here, or enter or check out past winners, two of which are below.