Nebraska Newspapers

    Opinion
£to//) Nebraskan
Since 1901
Editor Sarah Baker
Opinion Page Editor Samuel McKewon
Managing Editor Bradley Davis
Game plan
Look forward to an exciting
NU-OU matchup
It’s been awhile, huh?
In more ways than one, Saturday’s
Nebraska-Oklahoma game is worth a mini
celebration among fans of both teams and
of college football. It’s one of the few
nationally televised games left in this TV
mad universe on Saturday.
It’s the best and most important game to
date this year. Try not to think about the
likely rematch in a few months in the Big 12
Championship.
Savor Saturday for what it is.
And what is that? Some older fans will
look at the two teams and ask for a rekin
dled rivalry between NU and OU, like the
old days (which for us is the 1980s). If that’s
your wish, fine.
But the real essence of the 11 a.m. game
in Norman, Okla., is a slice of
hmw college football heaven -
The point hopefully a game that lives
is: We hope UPt0 the hyPe
it's a good a matchup °f warring
aame A philosophies, football-mad
** ’ fans and two coaches who
great have their own legacies yet
game, to pr0ve. It’s a matchup of
really. One two quarterbacks, Eric
of those Crouch and Josh Heupel,
ufor the leaders if there ever were
ages" type any, one with his legs, the
of deals. other with his awkward
We’re sidearm throwing motion.
Muskor Two different offenses,
r two different defenses. Not
fans, so exactly like the mirror
sure, we a images the Huskers and
like to win, Sooners used to be for so
we’d like to many years. But no less
stay No. 1 exciting.
and all the Or, at least, that’s our
rest of it. desire. We understand the
_ scores of Nebraska fans who
clamor for one more taste of
the 1995 season, when NU plowed through
teams like a horde of steak knives.
Too often, the Big Red faithful palms get
sweaty when the thought of loss rears its
head. It stays for an entire year sometimes.
How many have forgotten last season’s
Texas game?
The point is: We hope it’s a good game. A
great game, really. One of those “for the
ages” type of deals. We're Husker fans, so
sure, we’d like to win, we’d like to stay No. 1
and all the rest of it.
But part of us also knows that close
games are the memorable ones. Perfection,
in the perfect-in-every-game sense, is
rather boring. We’d hope that both teams
play at a level that can please a national
audience.
Most of us will be part of that national
television audience. For those who are
going, enjoy it, and enjoy paying out the ear
to watch the game. You’ll notice that
Norman, if you haven’t already been there,
is a lot like Lincoln in the sense that there
doesn’t seem to be much to do. And the sta
dium, Owen Field, isn’t as nice as Memorial
Stadium here in Lincoln.
But the atmosphere will likely be alive on
both campuses. It’s a worthy day for foot
ball. Oklahoma, good luck. Nebraska, Go
Big Red. Here’s a football game worth
cheering for every minute.
Editorial Board
Sarah Baker, Bradley Davis, Josh Funk, Matthew Hansen,
Samuel McKewon, Dane Stickney, Kimberly Sweet
Letters Policy
The Daily Nebraskan welcomes briefs, letters to the editor and guest columns, but does not guar
antee their publication. The Daily Nebraskan retains the right to edit or reject any material submitted.
Submitted material becomes property of the Daily Nebraskan and cannot be returned. Anonymous
submissions will not be published. Those who submit letters must identify themselves by natie,
year in school, major ancVor group affiliation, if any.
Submit material to: Daily Nebraskan, 20 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St Lincoln, NE 68588-0448. E
marl. lettersOunlinfb.unl.edu.
Editorial Policy
Unsigned editorials are the opinions of the Fall 2000 Daily Nebraskan. They do not necessarily
reflect the views of the University of Nebraska-Uncoln, its employees, its student body or the
University of Nebraska Board of Regents. A column is solely the opinion of its author, a cartoon is
sotefy the opinion of its artist. The Board of Regents acts as publisher of the Daily Nebraska; poli
cy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. The UNL Publications Board, established by the
regents, supervises the prockiction of the paper. According to pokey set by the regents, nesponsi
btfty for the edtorial content of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of its employees.
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When's the color?
When I think “art,” I think COLOR! I counted 9
full color pictures in Oct. 23rd’s issue of the DN. Yet
not one of Larry Griffings’ full-color paintings
received the same consideration as you gave (and
consistently do give) to the university football
team.
Call me nutty, but I'm quite sure that most of us
are aware that the Comhusker team colors are red
and white. Why not share a little extra ink for those
of us who enjoy the art composed by UNL stu
dents?
Kris Scott
Lincoln
Editors note: The art sent in by Griffing was in
black and white. We're sorry about it, too.
Bananas bursting at the seams
Here name is Rose Marie.
She’s 99 Vi pounds with
seven layers of clothes on,
soaking wet. Thank God she
isonly4-foot-8.
Rose Marie was a bulimic
herself, and, unlike me, the
genuine article and presum
ably not the preeminent joke
of someone’s grand play, but
bit player. So authenticity
uk_;a
petaluma
_watson
makes sense.
A good Catholic girl (A Rose Marie? Catholic?
No!) in her late 20s, Rose Marie felt pressure from
all sorts of directions back in her day: pressure to
be cute, pressure to have chastity, pressure not to
be left behind while being chaste.
The main reason is more basic: there’s no such
thing as a good-looking short glubber. She’d com
plemented her eating fixation with a side of three
ODs on horse pills and a cutting obsession, scars of
which grace her upper arms. And now she gets 50
grand to counsel me. Mental instability has its
rewards.
Rose is at the front of the fat banana of a circle,
sorta at where the stem would be, going around the
room, getting names, introductions, all for my
pretty face. I think the lifers in here - the steady vis
itors, the pros at living life to its thinnest - must
greatly tire of the newbies like me. And then I must
recall that considering the circumstances of recent
events, it’s quite likely one of these girls is, I don’t
know, my long, lost lesbian lover.
And so it goes around the room, some girls
longer, some shorter. There’s Christy, a weepy,
would-be pretty girl if her face wasn’t half bathed in
furry excess.
“So it started when I was 10, and my gymnastics
teacher told me to lose a little, and then I’d be real
ly good," Christy quivers. She then proceeds to
announce, without any hesitation, her inability to
kick the little puke demon on her shoulder while
her parents file for bankruptcy and move into a
two-bedroom apartment, lose the dog they’ve
owned for six years, trade the Audi for a 1987 rust
ed-up Escort and basically toss their savings down
the tubelets for furry face here.
“I spend all these days at home, picking straw
berry sponge cake off the carpet with your tongue,"
Christy says. “I’d wrap up in my favorite comforter
and watch ‘Wings’ on the USA Network. I could do
that all day.”
Then there's Cedra, a black dancer who used
meth to control her appetite cravings until some
one found her conked out in her bedroom, equal
portions of blood, drool and what used to be butter
popcorn on the floor. She smokes uncontrollably,
even though Rose Marie tells her to stop.
It comes to me, and the fat banana casts its
sunken eyes upon me.
“I’m here...,” I start.
“Start with your name,” Rose Marie says. Big
toothy grin.
“My name?” My name, my name, my name. My
name. What do I say? I am that I am? Oh no, that'd
be the author, bathed in shadows.
“Calgary Johnson,” Rose Marie says.
.And you know,
this jelly brain concept is getting very tiresome to
write, and read, I’m sure. But I state for the record
my jelly brain state, at this very moment, nonethe
less. The preeminent joke just became a weird
pawn.
“Say hello to Calgary,” Rose Marie says to the fat
banana.
“Hiiiiiii, Calgaryyyyyy,” the fat banana
responds.
“Interesting name, Calgary,” Rose Marie says,
“so tell us about your situation,” Rose Marie says. I
am jelly brain shock. I proceed unknowingly.
“I don't really know when it happened,” I say. "I
don’t remember any of it. I went into my bedroom,
there were stacks of mason jars, filled with pu ...
throw-up, all neatly stacked in the closet and my
mom reached for the top one, but it wasn’t the top
one...”
“Oh my God,” says Lisa, on part of the banana's
bruise, “I did that too. I saw it on one of those HBO
specials.”
Rose Marie turns. “Lisa... just wait...”
“No, no, no, no!” Lisa says, determined to get
this out. “I'd take them to the river outside of town,
where nobody would see me, and I’d put them in
one of those big potato sacks, and I'd lug them
down the shore and plop them in, one by one.”
She's sobbing now. “And, and, and I’d just watch
them float away. I’d have this contest to see which
one floated the longest, like the Olympics. And I’d
always eat one of those nut rolls, you know those
peanut rolls in the red wrappers. The king size
ones. I loved those.”
“So did I,” says Tamara, who prefers Tam-Tam
as a nickname (she’s an athlete, what does one
expect?). “And I liked those cherry mash nut things
too. And Kudos bars.”
Just look at what my jelly brain has set off.
“Those things were addictive,” says Jenny, in
her 20s, a businesswoman.
“Know what's worse?” says a girl who hasn't
identified herself yet. “Those breakfast fruit bars.”
"Ohhhh!” says Christy.
“They’re, like, engineered to make you eat three
of them in, like, five minutes,” says another girl I
don’t know.
“I was like that with Peanut Butter Twix,” says
this mommy-type. God, she could be Nadia.
“They don’t make those anymore,” Cedra says.
“They don't make cookies and cream either."
“I like to eat the tops off IWix first,” Jenny says.
Then Tam-Tam: “Like everybody has to eat a
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup a certain way.”
The faces, words, cries, moans jumble together
in a palette of fixations from there on: "Like Junior
Mints...” "Like how fries all crinkle up?...” “I could
eat 10 of those in two minutes ...” “I could do it in
one." “I once threw up nine times in two hours...”
“Me too ...” “Jesus ...” "Oh it so sucks ...” “And he
kept telling me and telling me ...” "He'd say he
could feel a fold while we were fucking, while we
were fucking! That’s where it came from...” “She’d
always say her mother told her the same thing...”
“Gluttony was against God, he’d say ...” "I could
either lose weight, they said, or just go join a swing
club because my bone structure wasn't good
enough to support it...” “I ripped out the IV like
four times when I was 16 ...” “I so messed with
their heads...” “I found out I was a lesbian...” “Me
too ...” "I have to have a cock in me, I don’t know
why...”
“What do you want from me?” I, me, Calgary
Johnson, asks, and it stops, like this train, on cue. I
know they’ll hear these words, these are the words
my God wants to hear, whoever it is, whatever.
Rose Marie walks over and leans down, though
not too far, for her height. She strokes my hair, and
the girls around, they drop their fat banana shape
and hover around with calming influence.
“To accept your fate,” Rose Marie says, smiling.
“To get better, you have to admit you have a prob
lem. That you’re one of us.”
“This is a setup,” I say, because I believe it. “I’m
never getting out of here. The scenes are just going
to pile on top of each other.”
“I think you’re looking at it wrong,” Christy
says, eyes shrunk straight back in her head. “The
parallel structure makes sense: you name a girl
Calgary Johnson because you want to write about
her, and the irony is you're that same person, the
person who you were writing about was you, unbe
knownst or something.”
“Like fate,” says Lisa.
“Like you’ve been ignorant all along,” says the
mommy.
“Just like Nadia said,” Rose Marie says.
The pieces start to plop into place, my insignif
icance finally gels to the point where I see it full
bore. I feel like weeping, like bawling until tomor
row ends and starts over again in this same room.
And I will. But I have a question first.
“So who is the other Calgary Johnson, if I’m the
real her?” I ask.
“She," Rose Marie says, “is petaluma watson.”
Too much to
say; in short,
I was an RA
I was a resi
dent assistant for
58 women. I was a
superstar for 10
months. Ten fast
months.
I cannot cram
what happened
into one column.
That would be
impossible. But I
can provide a
glimpse. This is about me. This is about
Smith 6. This is about being a resident
assistant
8:00 a.m.: I awake to chirping birds. I
stretch. I meditate. I chop wood. I am a
resident assistant
8:10: Breakfast I cook bacon and eggs
in a toaster oven for the residents. I
remove a window screen to ventilate the
dorm room. I don’t jump. But I trash the
burnt toast
8:30: Class.
9:30:1 meet with the residence direc
tor tor a one-on-one meeting. I plan a pro
gram with Jay Mohr. I snatch a photo from
her office to hold for ransom. I leave in a
space shuttle.
11:00: Lunch.
11:30: Class. Class. Skipped Class.
Charged Coffee. Class.
4:00:1 make posters for upcoming
programs. I get high on marker fumes. I
laminate. I waste paper I laminate carpet
scraps.
5:00:1 meet resi
dents for a floor din- / check my
ner with Harper. I
make a unicorn ice ^OZCC mail
sculpture. Monica and have
waits in line for Fruity 4g fyj\y
Pebbles.
5:30:1 check my messages. I
voice mail and have
49 new messages. I ,
three-three-seven three-seven
(i.e. delete) 48 of (j.g. delete)
them. One message is
from the residence Of tnem.
director. She is mad One
about the photo. I m(,ssaa(, is
return her message e 10
with the ransom from the
amounts?*®*. resi(ience
5:31: The resi
dence director is not director.
amused with this she is mad
prank or the 32 poor , ,
ones. She demands OtJOUt the
the photo's safe photo. I
return in a message. I rot..rv. v.or
three-three-seven it I
threaten to leak infer- message
mation about her with the
Labrador retriever. vyun Lnti
she laughs. ransom
5:32:1 return the amount: 57
photo to her office
and check the secret Cen tS.
passage into her
apartment. She
thinks it is a closet But I know better. I use
her computer. I print 29 pages in color. I
download a photo of me with a hammer
for her screen saver.
5:45: Monica is still in line waiting for
Fruity Pebbles.
6:00:1 look for the duty sheet
6:05:1 look for the duty sheet
6:25:1 find the duty sheet I am on duty
with Katie. Katie throws gum out car win
dows at stoplights. She hits other drivers. I
have better aim.
6:30:1 start class assignments.
6:31:1 stop class assignments.
6:32:1 call Katie. I head to Smith 8 for
rounds. She is coloring an angel I give her
a fake tattoo. She bites her finger.
7:00: Katie and I start rounds on Smith
10.1 tell her about the ransomed photo.
She laughs. She laughs so hard she starts
choking. I perform the Heimlich. She
claps.
7:30:1 complete rounds and return to
Smith 6.1 build a rocket
8:00: Food service shuts the lights oft
Monica is still in line.
8:01:1 fight for world peace.
8:02:1 give a shout-out to the resi
dents. I write poems about our experi
ences and host an open mike night.
8:05: Ayn-Marie returns superstar
soaked. She found the fountain. Keri knits
her a blanket. Danielle becomes the new
Danielle Steele. She gives us free auto
graphs. Michaela gives me a donut. I
invent plastic.
11:00: Quiet hours are in effect I said,
“QUIET!”
11:01: Smith 6 is silent. No cats. No
stolen snack bar furniture. No Lance Bass.
No random words. No marijuana bulletin
boards. No water fights. No cohabitation.
1 complete this column with eight
examples of being an RA
60 planned programs.
25 bulletin boards.
4 alcohol busts.
98 staff cat fights.
4587 voice mail messages.
46 headaches.
3 false fire evacuations.
2 hamsters.
I was a resident assistant for 10
months. I had the best residents. I have
the best stories. And a T-shirt
Smith 6: By Invitation Only.
Please’Ey Again.