Tony Jarboe is a journalism student at Northwestern University in Chicago. He's in his second year at NU and his second year writing for Turfsports.net. He pays to go to Northwestern. We should pay him to write for us. But we don't. Enjoy some previous columns by Tony as he brings us his thoughts, opinions and his college experiences.

WELL, AT LEAST WE WON SOMETHING I GUESS…(12-22-07)
For some time I had been perplexed by Northwestern’s inability to win in athletic competitions. As a very academics-oriented university, wins are not something that come easily, so we take pride in everything we do win, especially when that something is an award as prestigious as peta2’s Most Vegetarian Friendly College of 2007.
Yes, yes, I know your reaction: A collective “awe” as you let the significance of such an award soak in. Or maybe it is a collective “Huh?” as you try and figure out what the heck “Most Vegetarian Friendly College” means.
Basically Northwestern is being recognized by peta2 (the youth division of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) for having dining halls that use tofu, seitan, and soy most liberally. Foods like veggie burgers, chickenless nuggets, and vegan pancakes (no milk or eggs) appear in dining halls all over campus. Exciting isn’t it? On the ol’ thrill-o-meter, winning this award definitely ranks somewhere between “Watching Paint Dry” and “Watching Grass Grow”.
Northwestern underwent a rigorous, scientific selection process to beat out some 39 other universities in order to claim this celebrated prize. From what I could glean from articles about the process, it looks like peta2 picked forty schools based on what information they can gather from such sources of culinary expertise as Facebook and MySpace. Students then voted for one of the forty schools at peta2’s website, and whichever school gets the most votes wins. As I said, a rigorous, scientific process.
So, Northwestern is the most vegetarian friendly school as determined by the very systematic method of using an internet poll. But is that necessarily a good thing?
Look, I don’t mean I want vegans to starve. For the most part, it’s not their fault that their parents deprived them of the joy of hamburgers. But is it really necessary to provide the most vegan/ vegetarian dining options of any school in North America? A 2003 poll found that only 3% of people in the US are strict vegetarians, while 1.4% are vegans. And yet 20% of our recipes are vegetarian or vegan. Granted, the vegan population at Northwestern is likely higher than the general population, but I am going to go out on a limb and guess it is not that much higher. Perhaps dining halls are attempting to combat the “Freshman 15” by making 1/5 of the menu inedible.
Ok, ok, before I get angry emails from all of you animal lovers out there, I should let you know that I, too, love animals. They go great with ketchup.
 < Some people see cows, Tony see's this >

 

  BIG 10 ALUMNI CHALLENGE (12-17-07)

      One of the great sources of pride for any university is its alumni list. A school loves to trot out the names of stars that they have produced, whether they are in sports, acting, journalism, whatever. So which school has produced the impressive list of alums?

      There is admittedly a great deal of subjectivity in this as to choosing who the “big” names are from each school. The things I looked for in defining the most “impressive” list of alumni were quality, quantity, and variety. 

      To measure “quality” I ranked each list of alumni one through four and ranked them in order of name recognizability. From there I simply added up the rankings to measure the “quality” of each school’s alumni. As for quantity I used Wikipedia to see other notable people the school produced. In some cases, such as Michigan, Illinois, and Northwestern the list beyond the top four remains very impressive, while others such as Penn State and Michigan State had a precipitous drop off beyond the top few. Variety would be my tie-breaker in case any schools tied after the first two categories had been totaled. For “variety” I was simply looking for famous alumni across a variety of areas rather than just showing strength in one or two fields.

      Now, it’s time to dispense with the methodology and get to the results! Below is the ranking of each university with the four alumni I chose to represent them in the “quality” category along with an explanation of why I ranked them where I did.

1. Michigan
    1 Gerald Ford
    2 Tom Brady
    3 James Earl Jones
    4 Edward White

Michigan has a Top 4 that could hang with any college in the nation, including a former President of the United States, perhaps the most famous “voice” in Hollywood, a first-ballot NFL Hall-of-Famer, and the first man to walk in space. Their alumni list beyond White remained strong, including several astronauts and political commentator Ann Coulter. In addition, Derek Jeter and Michael Moore attended but did not graduate. That sound you hear, by the way, is every twenty-something female in New England flocking to Ann Arbor. The school that produced both Tom Brady AND Derek Jeter? Can’t beat that.

2 Illinois
   1 Gene Hackman
   2 Roger Ebert
   3 Hugh Hefner
   4 Will Leitch

Many of you may not recognize that fourth name, but he is the editor of Deadspin, one of the most widely-viewed websites on the internet. I put him on there to represent all of the technological wizards that come out of Illinois. Illinois has produced a ton of stars in not only technology-related fields, but also acting, journalism, and sports. Plus, the guy who founded Playboy went here. That alone is worth a Top 3 ranking.

3. Northwestern
      1 Charlton Heston
      2 Brent Musburger
      3 Stephen Colbert
      4 Joe Girardi

In terms of raw numbers Northwestern probably produces more big names than any other Big Ten school. Theater and journalism are the two major programs here, which of course are the two fields (outside of athletics) whose names you are likely to know. But, as I said, variety was the tie-breaker, so Illinois got the nod over my ‘Cats because the vast majority of our famous alumni are in either theater or journalism.

4. Purdue
    1 Neil Armstrong
    2 John Wooden
    3 Orville Redenbacher
    4 Eugene Cernan

Easily the best 1-2 punch in the Big Ten with Armstrong and Wooden at the top. Wooden has an NCAA championship ring for every one of his fingers, thumbs included, while Neil Armstrong is, well, Neil Armstrong. Redenbacher, of course, is the guy with the microwave popcorn. He gets bonus points for providing me with at least one meal a week. Eugene Cernan is the last guy to walk on the moon, which kind of brings things full circle since it was a Purdue grad that first set foot on it. Purdue has produced a ton of astronauts. My theory is that they are trying to get as far from the state of Indiana as humanly possible.

5. Ohio State
    1. Jack Nicklaus
    2. Jack Buck
    3. Jesse Owens
    4. Patricia Heaton

Ohio State is pretty weak beyond their Top 4, but they certainly have the quality down pat, producing a number of great athletes in addition to a smattering of other names such as Buck and Heaton. Overall, not a great variety from Ohio State, but good enough to crack the Top 5.

6. Iowa
    1 Lou Holtz
    2 Ashton Kutcher
    3 Tennessee Williams
    4 George Gallup

A wide variety in the Top 4 for Iowa, including a football coach, an actor, a writer, and the guy who founded the Gallup poll. Beyond this Iowa has produced some decent athletes, although no super-stars. Overall a solid, if not spectacular list of former Hawkeyes.

7. Indiana
    1. Dick Enberg}
    2. Mark Spitz
    3. Joe Buck
    4. Mark Cuban.

Perhaps the deepest Top 4 in the Big Ten. Any one of those guys could be their most notable, and all four are very recognizable. As you can guess by their impressive Top 4 and low overall ranking, however, their alumni list falls off a cliff beyond Cuban. A couple of athletes, former US Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill, and current MLBPA leader Don Fehr are ex-Hoosiers, and that's about it.

8.  Wisconsin
     1. Charles Lindbergh
     2. Bud Selig
     3. Steve Miller
     4. Jim Lovell

Even this far down in the rankings Wisconsin was able to put together a respectable Top 4. Lindbergh of course is an aviation legend, and Selig, love him or hate him, is a definitely a “big name”, especially in the past few weeks. A rock star and an astronaut round out their Big Four. The Badgers have produced a few good athletes, but little else outside of these four, hence their presence towards the bottom of the list.

9. Minnesota
    1. Hubert Humphrey
    2. Dave Winfield
    3. Robert Gore
    4. Tony Dungy

As we get farther down the rankings, more and more of the Top 4s tend to be populated with sports figures, usually indicating that the school lacks many notable alums. Indeed that is the case with the Golden Gophers, although I am thankful for number three, Robert Gore. He is the creator of Gore-tex, which makes Illinois winters much more bearable. I guess it should not come as a surprise that the creator of Gore-tex came from Minnesota.

10. Penn State
     1. Franco Harris
     2. Larry Johnson
     3. Tom Verducci
     4. Valerie Plame

A couple of football players, a Sports Illustrated writer, and a former CIA officer are just about all Penn State could produce. The school has some 20,000 graduates every year and this is all they could produce? 

11. Michigan State
     1. Magic Johnson
     2. Kirk Gibson
     3. Robert Urich
     4. Drayton McLane, Jr

I actually broke my own rule by including Magic Johnson on this list. He never graduated from Michigan State because he entered the NBA. However, I included him out of sympathy for the Spartans. Take him away, and the Spartans are one swing (Kirk Gibson, Game 1 of the 1988 World Series) from not having ANY notable alumni. For the record, Urich was an actor and McLane, Jr is the owner of the Houston Astros. Wow. Just…wow. 

      Big Ten schools pretty much run the gamut when it comes to alumni, from impressive to impotent, from Michigan to Michigan State. In the end, this was probably not a useful exercise, but it was fun nonetheless. I will have to rig the system so Northwestern comes out on top next time.

 

 

 

MY FIRST TIME! (AT A PROFESSIONAL HOCKEY GAME)...(12-8-07)
It was Reading Week at Northwestern this week, which means most classes were canceled to give students time to prepare for their upcoming exams. Needless to say, everybody was feeling just a little stressed and in need of a break. One of the guys that live across the hall from me, Greg, is a huge hockey fan and mentioned that the Chicago Blackhawks were playing the Los Angeles Ducks of Anaheim on Friday, and that tickets were only $8. I agreed to go because I am a sports junky who will watch anything up to and including Women’s Amateur Curling. James came along as well to watch his Ducks, whose home is about twenty minutes from where James grew up.
About the only thing I knew about hockey was that Rodney Dangerfield once said, "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out." Other than that, I expected the final score to be 1-0, or if it was a real barn-burner, 2-1. Still, tickets were only $8 and it gave me a chance to make fun of hockey. What more could I ask for?
So Greg, James, and I embarked on our journey to the United Center. We hopped on the "L" and went downtown, which is always an adventure in and of itself. Once we got downtown we had to switch "L" lines go out to the United Center, so there was about a ten-minute layover between trains.
 < Tony and his posse were not on this Chicago train.

While we were waiting another "L" pulled up, but this one was very different from any other one I had seen. The windows were lined with multi-colored Christmas lights, and in the middle was a flatbed car with Santa Clause sitting in his sled saying, "Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!" with Christmas carols were playing over the speakers. Instead of the usual window signs that say where the train is going and the color of the line, this train had a red and green sign that simply said, "Santa Express". The train slowed to a stop and the doors opened, revealing the red and green decor. A Chicago Transit Authority worker got out and said the train was a purple line train heading to Evanston, which was unfortunate because it was heading back where we had just come from.
Everyone on the platform, myself included, was completely taken aback by this stunning turn of events. It was as if a unicorn had just landed right there on the tracks. Certainly, we had heard of the Santa Express, but we thought it was just a myth. And yet there it was, right in front of us in all its glory. James begged Greg and me to ride it for a stop just to say we did, but unfortunately time was not on our side, so the Santa Express moved on without us.
Our train finally arrived and we boarded. Some homeless guy tried to sell us expiring bus passes for half price. Other than that the ride over was uneventful. We got to the arena, got our tickets, and found our seats. After I stopped my nose from bleeding, Greg, a seasoned veteran of Blackhawks games, warned me that the fans clapped and cheered during the National Anthem. I kind of brushed it off without giving it much thought.
Shortly after that the lights darkened, a laser light show started, and the Blackhawk players skated out and were introduced. Then the announcement was made, "Ladies and gentlemen, please rise and remove your caps for the singing of our National Anthem." The singer started and the fans started cheering, yelling, and whistling. Loudly. It was then that Greg’s words hit me. It was a surreal experience, because it’s not that I actually disbelieved him, it’s just that every time you go to a sporting event, everyone is dead silent out of respect for the singer. Here everyone is as rambunctious as they are during the actual game. I turned to Greg with a look of absolute bewilderment and he sympathized, saying, "That’s what I thought the first time I saw it." We figured that tradition must have started during a particularly horrendous rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner in an attempt to drown it out.
The singer finished and the United Center got even louder as the players skated to center ice for the puck drop. We had barely settled back into our seats when Chicago scored a goal, about a minute into the game. Everybody except James and me (pretty much the only two rooting for the Ducks in the entire arena) stood up and cheered. After a brief celebration the puck was dropped again and play resumed. About a minute later I saw some gloves fly off and everyone started yelling. What the…? I looked over and a Duck and Blackhawk were waling on one another. They were going at it back and forth while the other players and refs stayed out of the way. Everyone in the stadium was on their feet cheering on their guy. The Duck was looking good for a while but was finally taken down by the Chicago guy as the Blackhawk faithful showered their champion with applause. Order was restored and both players were penalized five minutes. A good start for my professional hockey-watching career: we were only two minutes in and already we had seen a goal and a major fight.
 < Unfortunately, there were no sightings of this guy...the greatest Blackhawk of them all...Stan Mikita (inventer or the curved hockey stick by the way).

I think there must have been a minimum blood-alcohol content required to enter the United Center because for the entire game clearly-intoxicated people were yelling "Hit ‘em!", seemingly unconcerned whether the ‘Hawks actually scored or not, just whether or not they hit the other team hard. One particular fellow with the BAC of Lindsay Lohan asked James, decked out in Angels gear, "What do you call an out-door ice-rink in California? Water! Ha ha!" James fired back, "Oh, excuse me, do you know where I can view the Stanley Cup around here?" He was rubbing in the fact that the Ducks won the championship last year, but this guy did not quite take the hint. He proudly pointed to a banner in the rafters and said, "1938!" which was the middle of the Blackhawk’s three championships (the other two were in 1934 and 1961) (why that dude chose 1938 I will never know).
 < Loved to this day by Hawks fans!

The arena exploded when, with two minutes to go, the ‘Hawks scored a goal to make it 4-3. However, it was close so the referees had to review it. Five minutes later the head ref finally got off the phone with the review booth, indicating a decision had been reached. The feeling in the arena was so electric that at that point, had I been the ref, I would have called it a goal no matter what the replays showed. I think there would have been a riot had the goal been overturned, and I do not mean that figuratively. All in all it was a great game with the Ducks winning 5-3.
So I had seen the mythical Santa Express and my first professional hockey game with not one but two major fights (a second one broke out with six minutes left in the game with the Duck taking it this time), and yet somehow my night was about to get even better. On the bus ride back into downtown Chicago we were riding with a gentleman who made the "1938" dude look as sober as a priest on Sunday. He was standing in the center of the bus, just singing and dancing. In the middle of the dance he turned around and did a pronounced booty shake which will continue to haunt my dreams for years to come.
He got off the bus at the same stop as Greg, James and me, leaving to thunderous applause. We started walking one way and decided to turn around, when I saw the two guys that had been with the drunken guy, with one saying to the other, "Your cousin is out of control!" I then looked over by the building that we were passing and saw the drunken guy peeing on one of the columns. In the middle of downtown Chicago. Wow. Just…wow.
 < This is just a dramatization...not the actual guy who took a public whiz after the game.
Unfortunately by this point I was kind of hooked on hockey so the three of us went back to Greg’s room when we got back and played video-game hockey into the wee hours of the morning. Speaking of wee, I hope those poor guys got the drunken cousin home ok. I am going to go out on a limb and say he had a hangover when he woke up. 

STUFF TO DO...(12-2-07)
For a school with such rigorous academic standards, there is always plenty to do at Northwestern outside of studying. Our sidewalks are littered with flyers advertising an upcoming speaker or event put on by one of the hundreds of student groups. A variety of groups ranging in cause from political to environmental to cultural bring in speakers to promote their various causes. The speakers range greatly from well-known political activists to rinky-dink no-namers, depending on the group sponsoring them. For some of the biggest names the group sponsoring them will station people around campus to attack you with flyers saying, “Come see so-and-so tonight!” Overall, there is probably an average of about two speakers a week on campus, giving students something to do when they are insanely bored.

For those with more culture than I have, Northwestern has an art museum with a many paintings and sculptures of modern “art”. Art, of course, is a term that I use very loosely in this sense, because most car wrecks make more sense than modern art. I miss the good old days of Michelangelo when a sculptor would make a sculpture and onlookers could clearly see, “Oh, that’s a statue of David!” Now people look at modern sculptures and say, “Oh, look it’s a statue of…uh…well…if you look at it from this angle it looks like a gigantic waste of money.”
On most weekends one group sponsors a movie for students at the student center. The movies are usually ones that are out of theaters now but have not yet or have just recently been released to video. Tonight I went to see the Oscar-winning film (not really) “Superbad”. It is very popular among people in my age-group, written by the same people as “Talladega Nights” or “40-Year-Old Virgin”. “Superbad” was pretty similar to the latter except less sophisticated. I guess the humor of constant drug, alcohol, and sex references somehow escapes me. On the bright side, at least the movie lived up, or rather down, to its name.
 < Not Oscar worthy according to Jarboe.
And of course for good old-fashioned entertainment there are always the old standbys, Northwestern basketball and football games. Unfortunately the majority of entertainment value is in the comedic aspect, but hey, entertainment is entertainment.

WHAT I'M THANKFUL FOR...(11-25-07)
Just kidding. It just seems like everyone else in the entire blogosphere wrote a column about things that they are thankful for. I suppose it could be a quick-and-easy column idea, but does anyone really care what some 19-year-old college kid is thankful for (Playstation 3, cars, and girls should just about do it)? I would prefer to go the other way and do a Festivus-style “airing of grievances”.
Take my classes for example. Most of them serve some sort of purpose, or at least have some sort of use once I get out of academia and into the real world. And then there is my Intro to Fiction class.
Finding the deeper meaning has never been a strong suit of mine. I like things right on the surface. If you have to work to understand the deeper meaning, is it really worth it? The worst part is nothing can ever be disproved. All you need is some insane claim and a couple of lines from the book to back you up, and academia takes you seriously. Two people can argue all day long about what point the author was trying to get across, and neither will do anything whatsoever to convince the other guy he is right. Trying to convince the Pope that there is no God would be a more fruitful task.
My general feeling is that if the author wanted to make a point that badly, they would have come out and said it. That saves many people lots of work. Plus, there is no danger of misinterpretation if there is no interpreting to do. You have probably guessed by now that literary critic is not at the top of my list of favorite jobs. I’m sure that literary critics are nice people and all, but is your job really that fruitful if you spend all day arguing and never get anything done? Seriously, we have enough of those people already. We refer to them as Congress.
Other than Intro to Fiction, my classes, at least most of the time, have actual bearing on the real world. But every now and again I learn about things that I will probably (hopefully) never have to worry about again. In anthropology, for example, we briefly studied a science called “garbology” which involves- you guessed it- studying people’s trash. Those who study it are called garbologists, an occupation which I just added to the list of jobs I never want to have. Basically a garbologist digs through people’s trash to…well, I’m not sure exactly what they are looking for. But whatever it is, I’m going to guess it is simply not worth the trouble. Why, oh why would anybody want to dig through trash, much less someone else’s?
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I guess I can be thankful that I am not a garbologist.

PSYCHING ME OUT...(11-19-07)
With midterms in the rear-view mirror and final exams still several weeks away, now is the time for me to work on research papers and other things for my classes. One of the requirements for the psychology class that I am taking is that I must either write a 10-15 page research paper or help graduate students by being test subjects in their psychological experiments for their masters or doctorate degrees. Students must accumulate twenty “credits”. One credit basically equates to working half an hour as a test subject. Hmm, working 10 hours as a test subject in a psych experiment or writing a fifteen page research paper. That’s kind of like choosing between Arby’s and Micky D’s for lunch. Option A isn’t great, but it sure beats the crap out of Option B.   
Most of the experiments range from half an hour to an hour with a few stretching to an hour and a half (those suck). The experiments are designed to test things such as your short-term memory, reaction time, perception, and personal interactions. Riveting stuff, I know. But hey, it beats writing a research paper.
 One of the experiments involved sitting at a computer for an hour, looking at pictures. After each picture an “L” would flash in one of the corners. As quickly as I could I was supposed to hit the computer key corresponding to the proper corner. I would then have to remember whether the picture was of a male or female. Really, do you need a college student for that? A reasonably intelligent first-grader could handle that. I honestly believe that I lost IQ points during that experiment.
Another fascinating experiment included strings of letters flashing on the computer and required me to identify it either as a word or not a word. One of the “common, everyday words” that came up was “thoroughfare”. “Thoroughfare? Since when is that a common, everyday word? Only at Northwestern. By the way, for those of you who, like me, have failed to memorize the entire dictionary, “thoroughfare” is essentially a fancy way of saying “main road”. I have no clue who came up with that list, but I want to know who the heck thinks “thoroughfare” is a common, everyday word. Sadly, antidisestablishmentarianism never came up. 
My most recent experiment wanted to test how people interacted on a date, but with one catch: instead of talking about usual “date” things, all we would talk about was a group of pictures. We took turns describing a set of four unrelated pictures to the other person which they could not see. Whoever designed that experiment must be one heck of a ladies man: (On the phone) “Oh sweetie, forget about dinner and a movie. Everybody does that! How about we go back to my place and we can describe pictures to each other. Doesn’t that sound fun?” (Click.) “Sweetie?”
Ok, so maybe doing these goofy experiments is not my favorite thing in the world, but I guess it’s a good deal. The graduate students get relatively willing participants for free, and I don’t have to write a long paper about psychology. Life is good.

Big Ten Bummer...11-11-07
Findlay 70, Ohio State 68. Grand Valley State 85, Michigan State 82. And of course earlier in football Michigan had that little 34-32 hiccup against Appalachian State. If America loves an underdog, then paint me Communist red.
In the grand scheme of things none of those losses has any real long-lasting effects. Michigan ran off eight straight wins following the season-opening losses to Ap State and Oregon. Findlay and Grand Valley State were exhibition games, so they do not even count towards the standings. Something tells me that States Ohio and Michigan will survive.
Even so, those three upsets have turned the Big Ten into a punching bag of sorts for the national media and perhaps rightly so. Granted, they were exhibition games so it is not like they should play like it is the National Championship game. But come on! Findlay? Grand Valley State? Those schools are so obscure that even their students don’t know where they are.
Needless to say I was in a bit of a funk after watching the Big Ten get battered and bruised by the Who R U’s of the world and needed a pick-me-up. As a Northwestern student, I am used to watching my teams get trounced on a regular basis, so the fans just laugh it off and jokingly say “Oh well, we are still smarter than you!”
That’s it! The Big Ten is a very good academic conference (for a power conference), so as a group I assumed they were either the top conference or at least close to it.
I used the US News & World Report college list to determine rankings for every school in each of the six power conferences (Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, ACC, Pac-10, and Big East). How it went down:

ACC - Sadly, the ACC is the best conference, barely. Duke, Wake Forest, Boston College, Virginia, Georgia Tech, and North Carolina were all Top 40 schools. The only thing that made it close was the presence of Florida State (112) and North Carolina State (85). Even with those two, the ACC was able to pull out the win.
Big Ten- I knew going in that the Big Ten did not have any real academic liabilities. Indiana was the worst school in the conference, earning a still-respectable ranking of 75. This was easily the best of the worst in any conference. Unfortunately a lack of star power (only two Top 30 schools) left us just short of the top spot.
Pac-10- Stanford, USC, UCLA, and Cal-Berkley were all in the Top 30, but there was a clear divide between the haves and have-nots, with four schools ranking 100 or worse, and a fifth (Arizona at 96) just missing.
Big 12- Texas was the best at 44, but “only” four teams ranked lower than 100 helped make this conference the proverbial “Best of the Rest”.
SEC- At this point we are basically splitting hairs to figure out which conference is worse. Nine of the twelve schools ranked lower than 90. What separated the SEC from the Big East was the presence of Vanderbilt, which ranked 19, thirty slots higher than any other school in either conference.
Big East- Four of the eight “institutions of higher learning” (used very loosely) ranked lower than 130, which is as far down as the list went. Any way you sliced it, the Big East is not a power conference when it comes to brains.

So all that work and it turns out the Big Ten is not even the smartest conference. Basketball is off to a rough start and we are having a bit of a down year in football. Oh well. If living in Chicago surrounded by Cubs fans has taught me anything, it is that there is always next year.

THE CHUCK-O-LANTERN…(11-2-07)
Wednesday marked the first Halloween since my official retirement from trick-or-treating, but sadly I still needed a sugar fix. Since trick-or-treating was out, I instead spent the evening carving pumpkins with my church group. Of course, all the while we were eating the mandatory Halloween candy. We had five pumpkins so we broke up into teams to see who could make the best jack-o-lantern.
My group started brainstorming for ideas of what to make of our pumpkin. I jokingly suggested that we carve it into the likeness of Chuck Norris, referencing the recent spike in popularity of the “Walker, Texas Ranger” star. After all, with Chuck Norris on our side, we could not lose!
Unfortunately, my joke hit a snag. Everyone loved it. At first I laughed it off, wondering how on earth we could make a pumpkin look like Chuck Norris. We played around for a little bit, sketching out different possible faces. Looking at the drawings, we realized that if you tilted your head, squinted, and used A LOT of imagination, they did slightly resemble Norris.
Ranking as not only the idea man but also as the most experienced pumpkin carver of the group, I knifed out the image. To simulate beard stubble, I poked the knife in and out of the pumpkin many times until finally something that resembled a beard began to appear. For the mouth, I cut out a thin rectangle, giving the pumpkin a look of pursed lips. Next, the eyes. Two half-circles with a small notch to look like pupils. The nose I cut to look like an ordinary human nose. Standing back from the freshly-carved pumpkin, the team began to admire the fact that, as much as a pumpkin can, this creation did, in fact, resemble Chuck Norris. Or at least a man with a beard. I immediately dubbed it the “Chuck-O-Lantern”.
 < Chuck O'Lantern Norris.
It looked even better when we put a candle in it, because the beard stubble shown through, along with the pursed mouth and evil eyes. This was one bad pumpkin. We could not lose!
Well, there was one circumstance which I did not foresee. Everyone else had done a nice job with their pumpkins as well. There was a pirate, Harry Potter, an abstract, and an ordinary jack-o-lantern. Unfortunately, the last one was dubbed “Christina’s First Pumpkin” because Christina, one of the girls on the team, had never carved a jack-o-lantern before. Guess who won.
So my Chuck-O-Lantern failed to carry the day. Still, it was a good night. I got to carve a pumpkin, make Chuck Norris jokes, and get my sugar high, all without going door to door dressed as a cowboy. What more could one want from life?

WHY I’M NOT A CHEERLEADER…(10-28-07)
I could make a list with a lot of zeros as to why I am not a cheerleader. A Top 10 list. Top 100. I could even make a good run at Top 1000 Reasons To Avoid Cheerleading At All Costs, Up To And Including Death (perhaps that’s a little extreme...).
For one, there is the dignity factor. As in, I still have some. Simply put, males with dignity do not do cheerleading, despite being able to hang around cute girls in skimpy clothing. That is what the beach is for.
Then there is all the hours of practice, whiny girls asking if their outfit makes them look fat (no, your fat makes you look fat), and various other unpleasantries that make life as a cheerleader so agonizing. Of course, the most painful thing about being a cheerleader at Northwestern is having to watch the Northwestern football and basketball teams every game. The only bright spot is spending most of your time with your back to the field, which somewhat mitigates actually having to be there. But still…
I added yet another reason to the list last week following the cheerleader’s trip up to Detroit to watch Northwestern take on Eastern Michigan at Ford Field. You astute readers out there will immediately detect a problem…having to go to Detroit. Yes, in and of itself this is a reason to avoid cheerleading, so you do not have to go to Detroit. Sadly, this is not the worst part of the story.
The game was on Friday night, so the cheerleaders, traveling with the football team, had to leave on Thursday afternoon in order to get to Detroit a day before the game to give the players time to recover from the road trip, get used to the environment of Ford Field, and do last minute preparations. The cheerleaders needed no such preparations, so they were free to do as they wished. Basically, they went to dinner and then hung out until the wee hours of the morning at the hotel. The stayed up until about 3:30 because they did not have to be up the next day until 3 or so.
CHKACHKACHKACH…Early the next morning the guy cheerleaders are awakened by the soothing sounds of a jackhammer in the room directly above them. Apparently the hotel was undergoing construction in certain parts, and the guys just happened to be lucky enough to be right by one of those parts. Ten minutes later the phone rings with the standard, “This is your 9:10 wake-up call.” By now the guys were slightly irritable, so one of them said, “Yes, we also got your 9:00 wake-up call from the freaking jackhammers!” Mr. Desk Clerk apparently was not having a great day either, as he replied, “Just say thank you,” and hung up.
At this point the guys went over to the girl’s room, which was a floor lower and all the way across the hotel, out of jackhammer range. While the rest of the cheerleaders sat and watched Scooby-Doo with the volume maxed out, James, still tired, went into the closet, curled up into a ball, and fell asleep. Ah, the glorious life of a cheerleader.
 < Typical Northwestern Cheerleaders.
Finally it is game time so the cheerleaders head to Ford Field, capacity 65,000. Attendance at the Eastern Michigan/ Northwestern game did not quite pack the house, as some 60,000 seats were left vacant. Unfortunately, because of this the cheers took about three times longer than usual. The cheerleaders had to wait for the echoes to die down (Let’s!…ets…ets Go!...o…o Cats!...ats…ats).
The game ended and everyone boarded the bus to go home. By this time it was 11:30. Six hours later, the bus pulled on to campus at 5:30 AM. The squad was not in the most spirited mood.
I cheerily reminded James that he could be headed back to Detroit on December 26 to the Motor City Bowl if the Wildcats can manage to win one more game in the next four weeks. I’m pretty sure he and the rest of the cheerleading squad will now openly root for the opponent from here on out.

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME…10-19-07
Show of hands: who has ever dreamed of hitting the game-winning grand-slam in a baseball game? Or returning an interception for a touchdown? Or hitting a three point shot at the buzzer to win the game? Another show of hands: who has ever done any of those? All of them?
We all have unfulfilled athletic dreams. Those dreams usually die somewhere between high school and the so-called “Real World” when we finally come to grips with the fact that we just are not that good at sports. Unfortunately, most of us never realize these dreams because of a little problem called LOFT: Lack Of Frigging Talent.
Thankfully, Northwestern has a group for those of us who still struggle to recognize our athletic ineptitude: intramural sports. IM sports are a chance for students to put their money where their mouth is. Like when a professional quarterback overthrows his receiver by five feet and gets picked off. You exclaim, “I could do better than that!” In IM sports you quickly find out that no, you probably could not.
 < Coach Hawkins said, "Hey Jarboe...go play intramurals brother, go play intramurals." Tony followed Hawk's advice.
I play in a 7-on-7 flag-football league with some friends from church. Our opponents are similarly thrown-together squads, so the skill level is not exactly top-notch. In other words, it’s the type of league where you think that you can pass for five touchdowns, intercept a couple of passes, and pretty much be a one-man wrecking crew. It takes approximately two plays for you to realize it is not quite going to be like that.
We have been through two games so far and scored zero touchdowns. Yes, we are an offensive jugger-not. We only have one basic play on offense, and that is where everybody runs around and the quarterback tries to get the ball to them, except that he usually gets sacked or throws an interception. We have no speed, no one who can catch, and no one with a strong enough arm to throw a deep ball. In other words, we are the Bears offense sans Devin Hester.
Our defense is- I hesitate to say “better”- less horrific, allowing “only” 20 points last week following a 40-point shellacking the week before. Even so, I doubt any team has more fun than ours. After the games the other team *gasp!* practices. We show up, play, lose, and go to dinner, laughing the whole way. We almost take pride in our ineptitude. I sure hope we don’t accidentally win a game and ruin a good thing.
Despite our shortcomings, I firmly believe we are merely one good quarterback, one good receiver, and one good defense short of being unstoppable. Needless to say, my wild fantasies of athletic success have not been fulfilled. That’s ok though, because I firmly believe that we could probably beat Notre Dame.
 < "Hey Jarboe...do you want me to kick your ass?"

HOMECOMING DOLDRUMS...(10-14-07)
It is Homecoming this week at Northwestern, which means a week filled with festivities that cumulate in the big game this weekend between the Wildcats and the Minnesota Golden Gophers. A pie eating contest, Jeopardy!, and the mandatory pep rally and parade just were some of the events that were scheduled in an effort to get students excited for this week’s match up with the Deep Yellow Colored Short-Tailed Burrowing Rodents (there’s a mouthful).
 < "I'm offended and outraged!"
Theoretically at this point the student body should be reaching the absolute apex of school spirit. It’s Homecoming. We are playing the 1-5 (Not So) Golden Gophers. We are coming off a big 48-41 overtime win at Michigan State. A win this week puts us in strong position to go 6-6 and become bowl eligible (hey, when you are a Northwestern fan, you take what you can get). So why does the overwhelming reaction seem to be a collective shrug?
A big reason is that Homecoming does not really serve a purpose. You spend all week getting students and players pumped up for a football game that usually is not that important. Most teams schedule some cupcake for Homecoming just so they can score an easy win. Isn’t it kind of self-defeating to schedule easy opponent for Homecoming just so you can pump up the players and fans?
Certainly another part of it is the fact that Northwestern students are not as football-crazy as, say, Ohio State. The Buckeyes have an entire website devoted to their Homecoming. Heck, they have a corporate sponsor for their parade! Really

BACK TO CLASS A PAIN IN THE......(10-7-07)
Classes are back in full swing, which sadly means less free time to do silly things like taking a road trip to Milwaukee. This quarter I am taking five classes, trying to knock off distribution requirements in the absence of my usual journalism classes. My schedule is kind of like ramen noodles: pretty bland and boring, but gets the job done.
The only flavor really comes from my sociology class. The prof has an unpronounceable last name (first name Amin), but he is very eloquent, interesting, and engaging. The material is also very relevant to journalism, because part of the focus is on media coverage of sociological studies and how thorough the reports are. This looks like it will be my favorite class by far.
And then there is archaeology, where the lectures are so dry that I get dehydrated just sitting there. The professor knows his stuff but seems simply unable to convey his knowledge in a remotely interesting format. “Watching Paint Dry” would have been a more accurate title. Plus, I really do not care how a bunch of old men interpret a bunch of 10,000 year-old bones in the middle of a freaking desert.
Psychology would be interesting if the professor was not annoying. She tries to be funny, which is like enlisting Helen Keller to analyze a Da Vinci painting. She just does not have the ability necessary to do it. Humor-imparedness (is that even a word?) aside, I am sure that I will pick up some useful tips on psyching people out.
 < The Northwestern library. Tony thinks he may have been here before but he's not certain.
I think statistics will be an interesting course, but I do have one question for the Northwestern math department: Is it really that hard to find someone who speaks fluent English to teach math? Seriously. Of my three math courses, this teacher probably speaks the most fluent English, but she still has a minor accent. It would not be so bad except that she has a very soft voice, so you have to sit in front to hear her. Sorry, end of rant.|
For whatever reason, Northwestern seems to feel that their journalists should be able to scrutinize books, so I am in yet another pointless literary analysis class. Yay. At least the professor is interesting, even if the material is not particularly so. Overall, it should be a good quarter. Now I’m hungry. I want some ramen noodles.

 

SUDS SERIES...10-1-07
Classes have finally started at Northwestern, well over a month after most other colleges have commenced. While it is always tough to leave home, I was also excited to get back to school and on with my life. That excitement lasted for about five minutes, when I decided that I had to get out. It just so happened that the Cardinals were playing a short drive away in Milwaukee. Hmm…
 < Go North young man!
At this point any person with any sanity whatsoever would not pursue the idea any further. Unfortunately, I was born without the gene that says "Don’t do that!" and immediately made plans to go. Captain Common Sense (aka James) said, "Let’s go".
This short jaunt quickly devolved into a logistical nightmare. In order to get to Miller Park, we would have to go into downtown Chicago to the bus station, catch the bus up to Milwaukee, and then go three miles to the stadium. During rush hour. Magellan would have gotten lost.
Worse, the map of the Milwaukee County Transit System looked like a 5-year-old took a map of Milwaukee and scribbled all over it with a box of crayons. It would not have been less legible if it had been written in Latin. So it looked like we were going to have to hoof it, because I could not make heads nor tails of it (although if you look closely you can see a shape that looks like a hippo).
The trip got off to an ominous start when the tickets that I had ordered failed to arrive. I frantically searched the mail room for my tickets but to no avail. Worse, that left me with less than an hour to get downtown via the El, meaning it had to be running right on schedule. Planning on the El running smoothly is like planning on hitting the power ball for your retirement fund: there is like a 99.999999% chance that its not going to happen.
By some miracle of God we got to the station on time and hopped on the bus. The trip was supposed to take about two hours, putting us in Milwaukee at 5:30. However, between 3:30 and 5:30 the highway we were taking transforms into the world’s largest parking lot. A one-legged St. Bernard could have moved faster.
We finally got into Milwaukee and had the good fortune of running into a guy that knew the transit system around the city. Following his instructions, we got to Miller Park about half an hour before the game, giving us ample time to look around. We found our seats and, after stopping my nose-bleed, settled in to watch a good game. I use the term "good game" loosely. For the first two innings the Cardinals had worse defense than the French.
Despite being defensively-challenged early on, the Cards did manage to win 7-2, thus proving my "Law of Averages Theory". The previous two nights St. Louis lost 13-5 and 9-1. By my theory, they were due to have a game that was not decided by the National Anthem.
I had heard many great things about Miller Park, but sadly my expectations went unmet. It was not a horrible park by any means, but it seemed just like every other new stadium, giving it a "been there, done that" feeling. The worst part was that the game was played with the roof on (Miller Park has a retractable roof), and I absolutely hate indoor baseball. One of my favorite views in a ballpark is looking out beyond the giant scoreboard to see the city skyline. At Miller Park the entire place was enclosed, so there was no such view beyond the center field scoreboard.
 < The Mill >
Also, Miller Park made me realize just how spoiled I am to be a Cardinals fan. The Brewers were a mere two games behind the Cubs, fighting for their playoff lives, and only 25-30,000 fans bothered to show up (the announced attendance was 32,000, but that counts all tickets sold, not the turnstiles). This would be inexcusable if this were New York, where the regular season is just a formality. But in Milwaukee, where they have not seen the postseason in 25 years?
And to be quite honest, I’m surprised some of the fans at the ballpark were able to find their way there. In general (and I stress in general), "Brewers Nation" did not strike me as a bunch of MENSA candidates. They pretty much sat on their hands for the first six innings, even though the Brewers were within a run the entire time and, may I remind you, fighting for their playoff lives. Did anyone have a pulse? Then in the seventh someone must have flipped on the "applause" sign and forgotten to switch it back. They also gave their pitcher a standing ovation after a strikeout to end the seventh with a man on first. I understand applause after a strikeout, but a standing O? Did they really have that little to cheer about? The only other time they got that loud was during the sausage races. I will give Milwaukee this: no matter how much Miller Park seems like every other stadium, they will always have the sausage races. The Hot Dog won.
Another genius brought a beach ball to the game. In San Diego or Los Angeles, it’s excusable. In Milwaukee? I guess that guy came straight from the great beaches of Lake Michigan. In any event, the fans did not help to enhance the environment.
In the end, I am glad I finally got to see Miller Park, and it is a fairly nice stadium, but the environment is not a particularly enjoyable one, aside from the sausage race. At least the Cards won.

THE JOYS OF LOSING...(9-23-07)
Winning is overrated. Really.
But as a St. Louis Cardinal fan I have known no other way since the turn of the millennium. Each year starts off with high expectations, which my Redbirds manage to meet or succeed every time (with 2003 being the lone exception) and postseason play became almost like a birthright. The Cardinals will make the playoffs because they are the Cardinals. Seriously, they could have printed up playoff tickets during spring training and no one would have blinked.
This is not to say we have not appreciated each and every postseason appearance. Unlike other teams (*cough* Atlanta), the Cards have had no problems packing Busch Stadium throughout every series. However, the stresses and rigors of playing every October do wear on you as a fan. In the past I have had to sacrifice my social life for a majority of October, because the Cards usually played deep into the month (NLCS appearances in 2000, 2002, 2004-2006). Now I have the freedom enjoyed annually by fans of Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Tampa Bay of not having to plan around those pesky playoffs. I might even (gasp!) do something non-baseball related on those cool October nights.
 < Mmmmm, what will I do this October? Maybe I'll visit Jarboe in Chicago.
Ironically, watching your team in the playoffs might make the experience LESS enjoyable. With so much hanging in the balance of every game, every inning, and even every pitch, the stress can sometimes be overwhelming. I have lost many fingernails throughout October in the past. Who needs all that extra anxiety? Not me! This October will be pressure free as I watch every playoff game without a care in the world.
Recently I had become so consumed with winning that I would often wonder how on earth people could root for teams like Baltimore, Colorado, and Cincinnati. Those teams were always mathematically eliminated by Opening Day. Why bother taking the field? Now I wonder how I ever managed to deal with the stress of high expectations, long playoff runs, and the resulting ruins that remained of my social life. The difference between losing and winning is night and day. Really, winning is for losers.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to remove my tongue, which is now firmly implanted against my cheek.

A WISH COME TRUE (9-16-07)
Many times I have heard the phrase “be careful what you wish for; you just might get it”, but I never really gave it a second thought. W.W. Jacobs even wrote a short story, “The Monkey’s Paw”, warning us to be careful with our wishes. However, I am not a superstitious person (no lucky shirt, no rabbit’s foot, nothing) so to me this was just another useless cliché. And this line of thinking came back to bite me. Hard.
By now everyone on Planet Earth (and even some on Mars, Venus, and the Moon) is familiar with the story of Rick Ankiel. A 21-year-old phenom pitcher starts Game 1 of the 2000 NLDS for the Cardinals and has a legendary meltdown, throwing five wild pitches and walking four batters in the third inning. Seven years and several operations later, Ankiel again debuts with the Cards, this time as their right fielder. In his first game back he hits a three-run homer and a grand total of nine bombs in his first eighty-one at-bats, leading the Cardinals to within a game of first place after being left for dead at the time of his call-up.
Ankiel was compared to “The Natural” by just about every sports columnist in the country because his story bore similarities to that of Bernard Malamud’s Roy Hobbs. At first it was a great story, because here was a kid who had overcome so many obstacles to return to the majors and succeed. Even better, he provided a spark for a stagnant St. Louis team whose playoff hopes had been on life support.
Although it was a great story, I eventually grew tired of the coverage. The team was doing well, but they were getting almost no media coverage. On sports shows there would always be a big production about Ankiel going 2-4 with a double and then a little blip at the end, “Oh, by the way, the Cards won 6-2.” I wished the media would stop focusing on the “Natural” storyline. When I woke up Friday morning my wish was granted.
Starting with the “New York Daily News” story and spreading quickly to news outlets around the globe, it was reported that in 2004, as Ankiel was still attempting his comeback as a pitcher, he had received a year’s supply of Human Growth Hormone from Signature Pharmacy, a sketchy pharmaceutical company to say the least. Ankiel was suddenly dubbed “The Un-natural” after his connection to the performance-enhancing drug and the made-for-Hollywood script took an ugly turn. Worse, since then Ankiel is in a 2 for 28 funk and the Cards have lost nine straight, falling to seven games out and basically ending any playoff hopes for St. Louis.
 < Not such a great story afterall.
The Cards have suffered through their share of problems and then some. Their ace has started one game all year while their number two pitcher has double that number. They lost arguably their most productive outfielder for the year when he took a foul ball in the eye while standing in the on-deck circle. Their All-Star third baseman also had an injury shortened 2007 campaign. By far the most tragic loss, however, was reliever Josh Hancock, who was killed in an auto accident earlier this year.
After all that, it looked like the Cards had finally caught a break. A rejuvenated Ankiel would inject life into this team and carry them into the post season, in what would have been a truly magical triumph over tragedy. The Cardinals would be a metaphor for Rick Ankiel, and Ankiel would be a metaphor for the Cards; setback after setback, tragedy after tragedy, but they never gave up and fought with everything they had, and in the end they would reach their ultimate goal.
The magic carpet ride ended abruptly with the HGH story. Ankiel became just another casualty on the 2007 Cardinals and now it looks like they have finally had enough, as both Ankiel and St. Louis appear to be finished.
So the moral of the story is: It’s true, be careful what you wish for. Now I need to fix this mess. Where did I put that lucky rabbit’s foot?

A  LONG SEASON AWAITS…(9-8-07)   

            I jokingly asked if any team had ever dropped from #5 to out of the Top 25 in one week.  After such a loss I figured Michigan would drop out of the Top 10, but I had them pegged for somewhere between 15 and 20.  After all, it was just one loss (although, admittedly, a very bad one).  Instead, they went from #5 to “also receiving votes”, the largest such drop in poll history.  ESPN ranked Michigan as one of the 10 worst teams in the country following the Appalachian State game.  How does a team go from being Top 5 to Bottom 5 after one game?  Perhaps the Wolverines were overrated.  Maybe they should not have been considered BCS Championship contenders (they certainly are not now).  But to suggest that they are not one of the best 25 teams in the country after one game is ridiculous.  People are acting as though this is the real Wolverine squad, when in fact they were probably simply overlooking their I-AA (FCS, or whatever they are called now) foe.  Admittedly, that is not a good excuse, but there is no way Michigan lets this happen again.  In fact, I would be willing to bet that Michigan will be 10-1 when Ohio State comes rolling into town on November 17.  And I am also willing to bet that a few OSU fans will be sporting Appalachian State gear just to rub a little more salt into U of M’s collective wounds.

            On a tangent, I found an online store that sells anti-Michigan gear.  Most of the things are quite amusing, such as the Michigan license plate with the Michigan “M” followed by “orons”.   But other stuff just made me cringe, such as the bib and the infant “onesie” that simply say, “F--- Michigan”.  Can you imagine how that impacts baby’s first words?  The mom will just be sitting in the kitchen feeding Junior when out of nowhere:

Baby: Fwuck Missigan!

Mom: What?

Baby:  Fwuck Missigan!

Mom:  (excitedly) Honey, come quick!  Junior said his first words!

Dad: (rushing in, video camera in tow) What’d he say?  What’d he say?

Baby:  Fwuck Missigan!

Dad:  Yes!  F--- Michigan!

Baby:  Fwuck Missigan!

 

Won’t Grandma be so proud when you send her the video of this historic event?

Seriously, any parent that would put their infant in clothing that says “F---“anything has some issues.  Yes I can understand being passionate about your team and raising your child to be a fan, but shouldn’t there be boundaries?  And shouldn’t “F---“be on the other side of said boundary?  Whatever, maybe I’m being prude.  Now I have to go regain my sanity after doing the unthinkable of defending the Michigan.