Blog | The Georgetown Heckler

How do you get past the hysterically image-conscious administration a pretty honest article about Georgetown’s lackluster history of suppression of gay students and their rights? Make it extremely long and post it in the middle of summer.

Also in here:

Georgetown was a very social place for undergraduates on campus in the 1960s, says John LeBedda (C’68). Dances, parties, concerts and other events such as polo games on weekends represented the norm, he recalls.

“Unfortunately, all of these events were totally straight…”

This is a headline I pitched at the 6/16 meeting.

I of course didn’t write the story. The Onion Radio News, once again, is masterful the work of Mr. Chris Karwowski.

I have realized that blogging mostly about The Onion is pretty masturbatory. However, there are a few reasons I’m keeping this up:

• I need blog material, and this is close at hand.
• I don’t have the time to comb through stuff I don’t want to read to find interesting stories about Georgetown, and I’m not living there right now so they don’t just come to me.
• Everyone else seems too lazy to post on our blog.

Anyway, a long two-week vacation and special projects week have meant that it’s been a while since the last installment of rejected headlines. This week, following an extra brainstorm session, I read 28 headlines instead of the usual 15.

Week Eight
Failing in the first round (Monday 7/21):

1. Dollar General’s Troop Morale Low
2. Shark Attacks Sensationalist Media
3. Bush Finally Breaks Out Looney Tunes Ties
4. West Virginia ‘Doing All The Work’ To Keep Up Pen-Pal Relationship With Western Sahara
5. With No Other Options, Man Forced To Create Own Sudoku Puzzle
6. Bored Dubai To Build Next Skyscraper Out Of Poor Arabs
7. Greatest Generation Buys Greatest CD Set From Infomercial
8. Man Survives 14 Hours In Death Valley Without Internet
9. Following Controversial Comments, McCain Campaign Drops John McCain From Ticket
10. McDonald’s Worried Olympic Sponsorship May Conflict With Its Nonconformist Image
11. OE: It Would Have Been A Crime If I Hadn’t Stolen That Rubber Cement (by a third grader)
12. OE: It’s In My Heart, I Just Open Up My Mouth And It Happens (by an amateur karaoke singer)
13. OE: Those Fajitas Better Come With Taco Bread And Salsa Sauce
14. P/CP: Point: My House, My Rules (by a mom), Counterpoint: You Don’t Own My Body (by the house)
15. MAG: If We Put These Pictures Of Obama And McCain Next To Each Other, Does It Look Like They’re Kissing?
16. MAG: We Imagine An Exclusive Interview With J.D. Salinger
17. MAG: 50 Great Ideas That Will Fail To Make It To The Market
18. MAG: “You Have To Laugh” And Lots Of Other Bullshit We Put In Steve Carell’s Mouth
19. MAG: Our Interview With Junot Díaz: Boring As Hell, And He Seems To Have No Information On What It’s Like To Work With Michael Cera
20. MAG: McCain Or Obama? We Help You Cast Your Inconsequential Vote For The One Who Conforms To Your Inane, Misinformed Worldview

Failing in the second round (Tuesday 7/22):

1. Area Grandfather, Baby Given Obsolete Palm Pilots
2. Conspiracy Theorists: Ted Kennedy Being Killed By More Than One Form Of Cancer
3. MAG: Hey There, Is That Picture A Metaphor For America’s Decreased World Power?
4. MAG: Hot New Band Vampire Weekend: From Riches To Further Riches

I got four headlines into the paper this week. Two are magazine covers. One is an op-ed one-liner, an item that will be accompanied by a picture and featured on the left-hand column of the front page of the paper and the bottom of the website (we call them “skyboxes”). The last is another skybox (a news one, not an op-ed), that I will be really excited to see in the paper. I’ll just say that it’s terribly morbid and is probably the best Onion headline I’ve written so far.

Here’s my epic laser tag point-counterpoint.

I wrote this in either my second or third week at The Onion. I had a little trouble at first coming up with the cornball tone of Will Gallant, but then I came across some of the message boards of adult enthusiasts and a review of some laser tag place in California by a dad. Oh boy.

The second part was tough too. I had to almost completely rewrite it on the second draft because it read like a play-by-play of Will’s actions rather than a speech by this laser tag employee, and even in the second draft it wasn’t quite up to par. I don’t think the jokes hit as hard as in the first draft, but the piece is better overall for fitting in with this guy’s voice.

Penis.

FUCK.

The only different new aspect, life without Ryan. My fourth son taking off for Georgetown University. Things won’t be the same without my loyal sidekick.

How could this happen? How? Is the only thing the admissions committee knows about basketball which players they’re supposed to let in? WE’RE TALKING ABOUT A MOLE HERE, PEOPLE. “Loyal sidekick”? C’mon. They blew it. They totally blew it. We’re going down.

Didn’t they immediatley realize when they saw this surely sleazy, sweaty, short kid show up at the admissions interview that he was going to destroy Georgetown?! Jesus Christ! R.I.P. Georgetown, 1789-2008. It was a good run. Until you let in a Pitino.

When Jack the Bulldog is found dead in a pool of blood at orientation, we will know it has begun.

Just look at this abomination.

Here you go.

That’s what was selected in the headline meeting on June 9.

A few details are mine, but most of it was written by Todd Hanson, screenwriter of the now-disowned Onion Movie.

Yay! Another fun Public Safety Alert!

Damn, I missed these.

Like most of these bulletins, this one’s a little strange. However, who wouldn’t want to live in Vittles? I considered doing it before getting the Onion job, which came when I was just four days from taking my last final and couldn’t seem to get a summer job.

I bet that was paradise until he got caught. It’s understandable he chose Vittles over Snaxa, because all of their ice cream was melted for some reason the other day.

As for Charlie?

We all miss him, random Vittles intruder. We all do. But we have to move on.

What’s going on with Village A? Walking by this weekend, all of the paths into the complex were blocked off like this. The only things I was able to see were a bunch of cherry pickers sitting around and a construction worker using one of them to polish a railing while he listened to his iPod. I did hear from a trusted friend that she found an empty keg on the site. So what’s going on in Village A?

• John Glavin needs Village A now for wherever his secret, arrogant plans are taking him
• Patio doors are being removed on the rooftops so residents can no longer pump beer to the underage freshmen hordes on the rooftops from the safety of their own living rooms
• Jim O’Donnell needs Village A now for wherever his secret, boring plans are taking him
• Jack DeGioia is finally giving into that criticism he received for not living on campus by having Village A leveled and his house airlifted onto the site
• Some multi-million dollar project is being undertaken on the rooftops by What’s After Dark that is supposed to make drinking non-alcoholic beverages and awkward sober dancing fun
• The rooftop apartments are undergoing renovations for their new residents, DPS officers, who found it took too much effort to get up there and keep watch of things otherwise
• The Stewards are building giant neon keys that will hang above Village A and will perform a dubious service to the student body while in no way signifying who put them up there
• Construction of a new business school building (nobody in the administration realized they had already started building a new MSB building)
• A new virtual reality center is being built that will allow visiting parents to keep up the illusion that their children aren’t drinking
• New paint is being put on that will make stairs more slippery
• A huge new statue is being constructed that parallels the one of Christ across the road in between Gervase and Ryan Hall, except this one is of Todd Olson and Jesus angrily beating a keg with baseball bats

Whatever the improvements are, the notorious apartments on Prospect, like the one I will be living in next year, do not seem to be getting them. Thanks again, Housing!

Above: Heckler editor Jack Stuef on the scene as construction ends on the “S.S. Miller High Life” in Nevils. Conclusion: the new MSB building would have been built a lot faster if Georgetown used the labor of its drunken students. Also: the MSB building would have collapsed multiple times and have had to be rebuilt. Also: you can’t see it, but the High Life bottle at the top of the ship is wearing a sombrero expertly woven out of a little plastic cup by occasional Heckler writer H.A.F.

This entry is being posted right now somewhere in Maryland on my way back to New York from spending the weekend in D.C. You should really try Megabus. It’s as cheap as BoltBus, and it features nice, new buses; strong, high-speed, no-password wi-fi; and bootlegged new-release movies for your viewing pleasure.