A few months ago, a prospective student from my high school (let’s call her “Susan”) visited Princeton. I did not know her—her interests, her talents, her social proclivities—and yet I found myself on the verge of launching into a speech about how Princeton is the best school—probably in the world—and how she would in all likelihood be denying herself the possibility of self-transcendence if she applied elsewhere early action.
The next song is very, very deep, but if I want to translate it, it’s fuck the police.” So Da Arabian Mc’s (DAM) introduced one of their final songs on Thursday.
Gabrielle Hamilton is looking at me like she’s deciding if I’m worthy of her hawk-like gaze. Her restaurant is called “Prune” and is lauded by restaurant critics but also by my mother, who sent me pictures of her meal there last year when I had typhoid and was on a steady diet of white rice and bananas. I cried with envy.
Princeton students are special. We’ve been told this upon every rite of passage we have experienced. No one ever dares to contest that they have near-superhuman aptitudes for creativity and hard work, Renaissance men and women all, steeped in the finest principles of humanism. Yet there is one thing in which we cannot manage to surpass the national average.
“I could really go for a good burger right now,” my friend says in a tone that conveys that a burger would fill not only her stomach, but her soul. She leans against the wall expectantly. All night, she’s been flirting with another friend, a certain kind of guy who likes a certain kind of girl: thin, glossy-haired, and intelligent enough to be a sparkling conversationalist, quick with a comeback, but not necessarily intellectually aggressive enough to call him on any of his bullshit.
As the recent New York Magazine article, “Why Do Women hate Anne Hathaway (But Love Jennifer Lawrence)?” thoughtfully explores, Anne Hathaway bugs people. Unlike the magnetic Jennifer Lawrence, Hathaway has always had trouble garnering public affection. For the most part, I try to stay away from the popular sport of celebrity hating that this article examines.
There’s a new dance craze sweeping the nation, folks, and it puts all the rest to shame. Look around: no one’s “wobbling” anymore, the “Cupid shuffle” is long gone, and the “one-two step” died with Ciara and Missy Elliot’s music careers. Right now, it’s all about the Harlem Shake.
While it was released in early October, the video “First World Anthem,” created by the nonprofit organization Gift of Water, has only recently started going viral. The video shows children and adults wearing slightly tattered clothes while standing in front of destroyed homes and desolate fields, reading phrases such as “I hate when my phone charger won’t reach my bed” and “I hate when my mint gum makes my ice water taste too cold.”
I don’t remember why I started listening to RadioNow 93.1, Indianapolis’ Top 40 radio station, but I know exactly when. I was nine, and it was the summer after third grade. Before this, I had basically stayed away from pop culture. I didn’t really get it, or like it, and there was a girl in my school who told me she was receiving shots to delay puberty because she had watched too much Britney Spears with her older siblings and it had somehow tricked her body into pressing “skip” over the last part of her pre-preteen years.
While brainstorming what to give up for Lent, my friend Spencer suggested foregoing facial hair. This would probably be an entirely inconsequential Lenten sacrifice for the vast majority of the male population. For a stubborn, barely post-pubescent boy such as myself, however, this is no easy endeavor. For some inscrutable reason, and to the consternation of friends and family, I persist in growing absolutely disgusting facial hair.
Late one Friday night, buzzed and carrying packs of sour candy from the Wa, I wandered to a room in Whitman. As my host and I sat on her bed, alternating handfuls of Sour Patch and some other Technicolor monstrosity, her roommate decided to show me a video for “Beauty and a Beat,” performed and directed by everyone’s favorite cultural punching bag: Justin Bieber.
