October 2003

Thank God that the editors of the newspaper realized the stupidity of printing four blog-style editorials in every issue and scrapped the feature this year. But you can't expect the newspaper staff to abandon one bad habit without happily embracing several other ones. My biggest pet peeve? The overuse of the "See SHITTY ARTICLE CONTINUED on page 6" at the end of articles. I understand the necessity of it on the first page, but they abuse the convenience. An article on page 4 refers me to page 6 and one article on page 7 refers me to page 9 and the other article on page 7 refers me to page 14. What a pain.

It creates editing problems for the staff when lazy newspaper layout people don't notice that paragraphs, like in the "Deep Impact" article, are repeated are repeated. The article was about asteroids that want to destroy our "peaceful planet" (Wait a minute. Aren't we in a war?) and bulldogs everywhere. Maybe the paragraph was repeated purposefully to show the dearth of NEO funding that NASA allocates. I wish I knew a few of these wealthy "hobbyists" who can afford to shower more than three million dollars on destroying NEOs. Maybe they can shower a new computer onto me.

Never can a paper go by without some mention of our illustrious, amazing, magical, perfect Bulldog band, which is Austin's very own, as opposed to, say, Kempner High School's very own. All is not perfection in Band World though. Apparently there are hidden, vague problems that the author of the article had no time to explain, as she to save room for gratuitous filler material at the end. It comes as no surprise that the author, a band member herself, would want to reserve room for kissing Bands of America's brassy bum. No wonder the band wins so often! (Disclaimer: STFU, I mean everything I write here.) (Other Disclaimer: Our-band-is-great-because-it-works-hard-and-Mr.-Westman-and-that-other-guy-are-geniuses.)

To the "Conan O'Brien: The king of cool" article, I reply (predictably): No, he's not. Look at this man. Does he LOOK cool? He's using his fingers to show you the size of his unmentionables. Since when was being grotesquely tiny considered cool? And as for AHS graduate Brandon Wilson who frequently tells Conan from the court mandated 500 yards away that he "loves" Conan, I feel only pity as that sort of love continues to be illegal in our state. To criticize the article itself, why did the author write about Conan's wife and "unnamed child"? Why doesn't that child have a name? She has been alive for two weeks.

Our high school DOMINATES the county fair, yo. One kid, whose name may be either "Daniel" or "Danielle," won the swine competition. I have a sneaking suspicion that this article was written purely for the opportunity to use the word "swine" as often as possible. There really isn't anything to criticize in this article except the kids' funny names. If I were named like junior Wyne Whitt, you can bet your blue-butt swine that I wouldn't risk placing eighth place for my "goat." You know what I mean?

Someone needs to sit the newspaper staff down and explain (very slowly) the underlining/italics/quotation mark conventions for titles of TV shows, plays, and books. You italicize titles of plays! Argh!

Anyway, the review of the school's production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile, in which the newspaper saw fit to shorten to just old "Picasso," panders idiotically to the egos of the theater members. There was absolutely no criticism, even though there was much the cast could have fixed. The kid who played Mr. Schemidimiedean (or however you say it or spell it) couldn't project his voice, and the actors who played Picasso and Einstein were almost too loud. And since the staff printed the article after the play stopped running, they could have described some of the jokes, like I did when I wrote about it, instead of simply alluding to them, which bores the reader.

And the author had the gall to say that it's ironic that no one "notices or realizes" that the play is set at the beginning of a new century, just like our lives now in 2003 hover at the start of this new century. Was she insane? How could she think that people would be daft enough to miss that? And if she'd spoken to the director, she would have realized that the director purposefully chose the play because its future-oriented themes apply to our lives now.

And now for the most asinine article in the paper: "New on the tube." I half-hoped that the article would make fun of the stupid new teen drama shows on the WB and Fox, but it just summarized them. Well, all right, fair enough. Summarization. I noticed something strange about this article though. Some phrases describing the shows were actually clever enough to make me laugh or coherent enough to excite understanding. Others were like "Both shows have the set up for some major drama." Weird.

The end of the article credits all information to MSN.com, and curious and suspicious, I braved my way to that annoying company's site. And I discovered -gasp- blatant plagiarism! The description of the new show Coupling was lifted directly from this article. And you can be sure that whichever student wrote this article (the author isn't specified), when describing Jake 2.0, didn't know what it meant "to interface with any form of technology," seeing as how he or she copied it shamelessly from this article. Never before has The Legend sunk so low. I also noticed that the article credits MSN, when it's obvious that the articles aren't even on MSN. Maybe the author just used MSN to search for the articles. Maybe the staff should just start crediting everything to Google.

A MALE authority figure? Come on, Daddy, hit me harder? Eww. Don't make God so dominatrix-like.

The "Interview with a vampire" article, although having a cryptic title, was indeed a "refreshing dose of maturity." I'm enthusiastic about this article. The author interviewed his best friend (who doesn't really look like a vampire). The best friend studiously (and unlikely) values education and claims that the reason he doesn't have school spirit is because he and the school "have a strictly educational relationship." Made me suspect something a little more intimate on the side, something secretive and maybe a little kinky.

Note for kids old enough to vote: The calendar incorrectly places Election Day on Wednesday, November 5. Of course, it's really on Nov. 4th. I guess there really isn't room to squish it in there, all the space for the fourth being taken up by P. Diddy's birthday. Credit Stacy for pointing out this error. And remember to vote Bill White for Mayor!

The loser in typos is the Boobs on the Tube article, with thirty. Or sixty, if you count open and close quotation marks separately. It also wins the trophy for being the most asinine article. What a pile of plagiarized crap. I can't believe I had to read that.

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