Blog | The Georgetown Heckler

I’m pretty sure the Vatican is going to force this down soon. That hug has gone on for months.

I wasn’t sure if I should even put these up because they’re just terrible. I guess I had an off week in writing headlines. I just could never get into the groove of it last weekend.

Week Ten
Failing in the first round (Monday 8/11):

1. Tootsie Roll Bag Found In Junk Drawer Saves Woman’s Life
2. Animals Of The Forest Begin Preparations For Ramadan
3. Three Die Trying To Reach Annual Everest Climbers Summit
4. Bush Still Hanging Around Olympic Village
5. Child’s First Steps Into Grand Canyon
6. Motivational Speaker Slips In Message While Teaching Everyone The Moonwalk
7. Good Morning America Viewers Demand Robin Roberts Go Through Cancer Treatment Again
8. Scalia Loudly Eats Tortilla Chips During ACLU Lawyer’s Argument
9. OE: Despite What The Media Wants You To Think, Not All Penguins Wear Adorable Scarves
10. OE: Perhaps I’ve Been Listening To Too Much Ray Charles (by Vladimir Putin)
11. OE: My Inoffensive, Pro-Establishment Rapping Is Really Taking Me Places
12. MAG: Smash Mouth: Still “All Stars” In Their Own Way
13. MAG: How To Make Rachel Ray’s Favorite Ethnic-Food-Inspired Recipes
14. MAG: Installing A Pond In Your Back Yard In A Last-Ditch Effort To Make Yourself Happy

I apologize for you reading those. Usually I like all of the headlines I pitch, but these were just desperate. Looking back, especially 9 makes me cringe, and I wrote that one because I couldn’t stop watching this video last Sunday. I actually kind of liked 2; that comes from this video. Apparently I couldn’t come up with a Snow Miser / Heat Miser headline that wasn’t a lame global warming joke.

Failing in the second round (Tuesday 8/12):

1. Second Graders Find Used Condo On Playground
2. OE: I Guess They’re Only Giving Rhodes Scholarships To Total Assholes
3. OE: Ask An Advertisement For A Cleft Lip Charity

No headlines got in this week. I wrote one news story.

As my time at The Onion is in its final weeks, so nears the end of the Heckler summer blog. Will we continue into the school year? I’d like to, because there are always campus issues and news items I want us to satirize that can’t make it into the regular paper. However, considering our track record, it is unlikely.

This week in The Onion I wrote the Jackie Chan op-ed that I pitched as a headline a couple weeks ago. I watched all of Chan’s movies in junior high, and I think my love of him comes through between the fun being poked.

Here’s a graf that got cut that may have just been funny to me because I took Chinese Religious Thought for my second theology course:

There is an old Chinese fable I always tell these kids. One day, a peasant came up to Confucius. “I am sick of wearing my black vestment,” the peasant said. “It has been a whole week since the emperor’s concubine died. Who made you the vestment boss?” This angered Confucius; however, Confucius backed down from fighting him. “I will let you wear whatever vestment you want from now on,” he said. The peasant was stunned. Confucius had never let anyone break one of his analects before. The peasant went happily back to his family and put on a red vestment. The next day, however, Confucius told the emperor that he had seen a peasant undermining the emperor’s authority by not wearing a black vestment. The emperor sent for the peasant and had him tortured and killed in front of his troops, giving them the pride and morale to defeat a rival army and win the emperor and his advisor Confucius all the land and riches of the region.

Also, we’ve officially started the new content I mentioned a few weeks back, web-only War For The White House news briefs. I will continue to be part of this project after I return to Georgetown. You can see our first item here. That’s my headline, and the article was written by the (acting) editor-in-chief Joe Randazzo. He originally put my last name in there for the Georgetown professor, but I had him change it to Sam DeCanio, a professor I took last semester, who was fitting considering the satire of the article. Take him if you get a chance.

via Wonkette

Hot damn. Thank God this kid in a prom tuxedo, a “student of politics and history” according to the video description, is going to follow the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr. by being a Republican and fetishizing tanks. (Yeah, if you didn’t know, King was a Republican. You may have been confused by John F. Kennedy releasing him from prison, King voting for JFK and LBJ and denouncing Barry Goldwater, Republicans like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms who didn’t see quite eye-to-eye with King, and pretty much all civil rights activists and black people being Democrats.)

I assume Shawn Summers will follow King’s example of violence and his own preference for war by joining the ROTC, right? According to his Facebook profile, he plays this fantasy online war game.

He also made a Facebook group for himself to help win this contest. He made sure to say his name in the group description “so you know it’s me and not a hoax.” Why would anyone think this video is a hoax, Shawn? You represent yourself so perfectly.

“A REPUCLICAN. YES, A REPUBLICAN. THIS IS HIS DESKTOP. THIS IS HIS VOTER REGISTRATION.”

Who is Shawn Summers? Let’s look at his Facebook photos!

I really hoped this one was a hoax. His YouTube name is “jedimaster51090,” however.
At right, as a child…
Playing piccolo in his high school marching band….
In drama club…

Well, we can all see exactly what kind of Republican Shawn is, so it’s kind of hard not to feel some compassion for him now.

Unfortunately, he won’t win this contest. There’s a 13-year-old misinformed geek who is already wearing a flag pin on the collar of his polo shirt. Sweet visuals!

Today I turned 20. That hurts. But things are busy as ever for me at The Onion, with only a few more weeks left to go.

Week Nine
Failing in the first round (Monday 8/4):

1. Obese Teen’s Dream Of Finally Starring In School Play Quashed By Fatsuit Tevye Idea
2. Recently Divorced Man Returns To Bar To Find Self Only One Drinking Zima
3. Fourth-Grader Knowingly Asks Teacher What Swear Word In Reading Book Means
4. Tourists Disappointed To Find No Restaurant In Wall Hole
5. Studies: Magic Johnson AIDS Death Rate Remains At 0%
6. People’s Liberation Army Shoots Olympic Spirit Into Protesters
7. Next Mummy Movie Just Brendan Frasier Standing In Front Of A Green Screen For 70 Minutes
8. OE: I Also Did It Frank Sinatra’s Way (By Michael Bublé)
9. OE: If They Won’t Give You Roles Anymore, Sometimes You Just Have To Make Stuart Little 4 Yourself (By Geena Davis)
10. Beatles Parody Band Needs “Help!” With Their Medicare Prescription Drug Forms
11. Report: Foreclosure Rates Starting To Help Alleviate U.S. Ghost Overcrowding
12. MAG: We Sit Down With Kirk Cameron And The Angel Gabriel To Discuss Their Latest Book (pic of Kirk Cameron sitting next to empty chair)
13. MAG: Fun Summer Recipe Ideas That Will Momentarily Keep Your Mind Off Your Child’s Autism
14. MAG: The Winners Of Our “Win A Date With A Jonas Brother And His Parents” Contest
15. MAG: The All-Sudoku-Puzzle Issue

Failing in the second round (Tuesday 8/5):

1. Aria Sung By Crazed Opera Character After Murdering Her Husband Used To Class Up Audi Commercial
2. Bush Orders Deployment Of Afghanistan To Iraq
3. Website Designer To Go With Silhouette Of Crowd Waving Their Arms In The Air
4. MAG: What Your Children Would Have Looked Like If You Had Them With Patrick Dempsey Instead

One headline got in the paper this week as a full article, and I’m writing it. Another got in as an op-ed.

Community Celebrates Feast of St. Ignatius

I hope that Ignatius they ate tasted good!

We lions sure love that hickory-smoked flavor you can only get with the first Jesuit. That’s the truth — NO LION!

Really though, Ignatius, if you didn’t want people to think your flesh was delicious, you shouldn’t have given all your lectures while lions were chewing on your limbs. You were bound to be depicted that way.

Bonus points to the lion on the right for eating his Ignatius upside down and holding on with just one hind leg. NICE FORM!

I will now be smitten by the Catholic Jesus for this. Sorry, Jesuits.

EDIT: Apparently that picture from Google is of another St. Ignatius, one who got himself eaten up by some lions in a coliseum, and not the Jesuit one. However, I’m still not convinced it’s not the same guy. First, I’m pretty sure Catholics wouldn’t make more than one guy named Ignatius a saint, no matter how good he is, because that would be too confusing for them. Second, wrestling lions in a giant stadium has been the official sport of Jesuits for centuries. Go to Multi-Sport Field at 4 AM on a Thursday and you’ll see them. Considering there’s no information on Ignatius of Loyola’s death on Wikipedia, and I’m sure Dan Brown would back me up on this, I’m almost certain the whole thing’s a cover-up. Ignatius of Loyola died wrestling a lion, but the Jesuits wanted to continue doing it, so they said that the body was of another guy named Ignatius and, panicking, canonized him a second time just in case. Also, I will burn in Catholic Satan’s Hell doubly for this edit.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/upcoming_date_only_thing_between

That’s me. The headline and article were written by Matt Morrison, the other Onion writing fellow, based on his own sad life. I mean c’mon, you don’t really think I’m a “Upcoming Date Only Thing Between Area Man, Utter Self-Neglect” guy, right? I can’t even get a date.

I was able to keep that jar of peanut butter, by the way. Unlike this slob, I fold up pieces of bread and stick it in the jar and eat it instead of sticking a spoon in there. I don’t own a spoon or fork, and there was only a knife in this apartment when I got here.

Now that this is up, I realize I really should have told the graphic editors to photoshop out the Georgetown stuff. The administration is totally going to see this photo of me in a shirt bearing the university’s name, they’re going to sue The Onion, and I’m going to be out of a job. Fuck.

I seem to be busier than ever at The Onion. Between trying to come up with the regular headlines, coming up with headlines for our special issues, trying to write articles, trying to write jokes for daily content and headline and picture captions, working to help launch a new (or rather, seriously ramped up) section of the paper / website, and working on a pilot with Joe Garden for Adult Swim (well maybe, my relationship with a certain inanimate object in the writers’ room is probably just a way to relieve the tedious parts of working here rather than the next Odd Couple), I can see that this sentence is too long. I need to stop writing run-on sentences. What? Anyway, I haven’t worked this nearly this hard creatively before. Instead of coming up with one article idea a week or so for the Heckler, my joke abilities are being strained to churn out new material within days, hours, and sometimes even minutes. It’s easy to see how this profession can wear on people. Instead of just saying a witty remark as it comes to me at a party now, I seem to over-analyze it and want to throw up (though that could be the alcohol). I begin to wonder if I will become as disillusioned with comedy as I did politics
last year. Probably not, but taking pity on myself like this and questioning my worth keep me going. I can’t just accept that this is the peak of my life right here, writing for The Onion, and enjoy it. Though is assuming I’ll never do anything bigger than this just more self pity? Eh, here folks, look at these funny funny funny funny funny funny funny funny funny funny headlines:

Week Eight
Failing in the first round (Monday 7/28):

1. Homeless Woman’s Promotional Bag Not Doing Bank Of America Any Favors
2. New DNA Technology Clears 91-Year-Old Black Man Of Rape And Murder Of Amelia Earhart
3. Cambodia Sex Tourism Board Rolls Out New “Cambodia: The Next Vietnam” Ad Campaign
4. Lee Greenwood Hints At Another Terrorist Attack
5. Nelson Mandela Wondering Why He Hasn’t Been Asked To Guest-Host Tyra Banks Show Again
6. PEZ Dispenser Collector Dispenses With Own Life
7. Area Man Turns Love Of Complaining Into Profession
8. Fed Rates Remain Steady As Bernanke Remains Steady On Couch
9. Boy Forced To Give Signature Not Sure Whether To Use Cursive Or Print
10. OE: If You Keep Trying To Turn This Candle Party Into A Party, I’m Going To Have To Ask You To Leave
11. MAG: How Long Will It Take This Injured Major League Pitcher To Make What You Will In A Lifetime?
12. Area Man Spends All Of His Time Reading Up On How To Be More Productive
13. Nabisco Scientists Complete Periodic Table Of Oreo Flavors

BACK TO SCHOOL ISSUE:

1. Naive Freshman Floor Unsure Why They Have To Set Rules For Vomiting In The Common Room
2. Professor Surprised History Of American Beer Pong Course So Popular
3. Secret Society Secretly Lame
4. South Korean Girl Living Next Door May Or Not Be Dead
5. Rich Kids Magically Gravitate Toward Each Other In First Week On Campus
6. Cell Phone Ring In Library Met With Deafening Sighs
7. MAG: Boat Shoes: Could They Be The New Crocs?
8. MAG: Fashion 2008: We Tell You Which Clothes To Steal From The Laundry Room

Failing in the second round (Tuesday 7/29 and Thrusday 7/31):

1. Man Wearing Spongebob Suit Can’t Possibly Be Licensed To Do That

BACK TO SCHOOL ISSUE:

1. OE: Ask A Freshman At His First College Party
2. University President’s Letter To New Students Obviously Written In 1996
3. Visiting Parent Takes Over Class Discussion
4. MAG: 10 Tips That Would Have Really Helped You Not Fuck Up Your SATs
5. MAG: How To Make Your Suicide The One Your Campus Will Be Buzzing About

So there you go. Through all that work, and endless discussion in meetings, I wound up with one op-ed headline in the regular issue and one op-ed one-liner in the back-to-school issue. This week the article I wrote was actually the op-ed I got into the regular issue. It’s in the character of one of my childhood idols, and it was really fun to write. I just hope it’s not too mean.

Check the Onion website Saturday or this week’s print issue at stands now to see my fat face ruining the image of Georgetown alumni and this fine university.