Jeff Carl.com

By Jeffrey Carl

It occurs to me now that topical humor from college campuses nearly 30 years ago does not age well. I’m sure it was absolutely hilarious at the time, though. Enjoy!

Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Collegian or its staff. In fact, they sure as hell don’t, but what can we do? We’ve been hoping for a while that this guy would stop writing and pick up a constructive hobby like building those neat little ships inside bottles or something, but he keeps writing and his mom said she’ll cancel her subscription if we don’t run his columns and we only have three other subscriptions so we’re kind of over a barrel on this one. Whatever the case may be, this column is property of The Collegian and is not to be reprinted, excerpted, quoted from or even talked about without the express written consent of The Collegian and the National Football League. 

I hate charity fundraisers. I always have. Probably always will. It’s not like I’m a mean, nasty person … well, yes, actually, I am, but that’s not why. 

I mean, I don’t object to the idea of charity or something. I don’t mind giving a few pennies to benefit victims of dutch elm disease or scurvy or whatever. It isn’t even that I’m opposed to doing things for other people in general: you can get a fantastic buzz if you drink after giving blood, and if you’re stealthy, you can steal hundreds of little packs of Chips-Ahoy. 

I guess it’s that they’re all just so boring. Maybe if campus organizations found something exciting to do, I could get more interested. Perhaps instead of having wussy “pledge auctions,” fraternities could sell their pledges into the zombie slave trade and sororities could sell theirs in the red light district. They’d get a lot more money, and it would be so much more interesting.

Instead of simple teeter-tottering, they could combine it with those strength-testers in carnivals: one person would jump on the see-saw and propel the person on the other end up and into a large brass bell hoisted above them. If they ring the bell, the charity gets $5.

Then the other person, wandering about with a concussion, cerebral hemorrhaging, and muttering something about “time to make the donuts” gets to jump on their end and reverse the process. This raises money and is endlessly amusing, because bad things happening to other people is always good humor.

Or instead of a simple “Jail n’ Bail,” they could hold a “Turkish Prison Jail n’ Bail.” Students would again be jokingly “arrested” until their friends paid the requisite amount to “free” them. But instead of a cushioned corner of the Pier, students would be taken to a sub-basement of the Physical Plant building and confined in small cells, tortured psychologically and beaten continuously with rubber hoses. The psychological torture might consist of forcing them to watch MTV-Europe or reruns of “Saved by the Bell.” This would increase the urgency for the friends to come bail them out, and you could probably squeeze more money out of them, too. 

In fact, since I’m certainly not afraid to recycle old jokes, I think every campus organization could get into the act, each according to its own special abilities and gifts. For example:

INTERVARSITY CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP/CATHOLIC CAMPUS MINISTRY JOINT FUNDRAISERS:

1. Sell Indulgences.

2. Inform the campus that God has declared that Dr. Burhans will be “called home” unless it raises $5 million.

DINING HALL FUNDRAISERS:

1. Host lavish black-tie $100/plate dinner event. Serve real food.

2. Asassinate key figures in the University administration; seize reins of power, and declare martial law. This wouldn’t raise funds for anything, but it would still be really cool.

UNIVERSITY PLAYERS FUNDRAISERS:

1. Perform guerrilla theater skits at the Regency in the food court, in front of the Chick-Fil-A. Make people pay them to go away.

2. Undertake major renovations, then rename the James L. Camp Memorial Theater, “The Kamp Karaoke Kavern.” Get together with CAB and work something out. 

JEPSON SCHOOL FUNDRAISER:

Call Bob Jepson.

Maybe I’d be more excited if charities were more aggressive. You know, if it’s such a great cause, people should have no excuse for not giving. If the United Nations can send troops to Somalia, why shouldn’t UNICEF be able to send brigades of mechanized infantry to shopping malls and establish martial law at The Gap until all the little snots there hand over their parents’ credit cards? Perhaps the Salvation Army would send legions of crack paratrooper Santas to K marts across the country to insure everyone “gives ‘til it hurts.”

Maybe my problem is the charities that these fundraiser events are for. I’m sure they are honest and deserving, but there are a lot of worthy causes to raise money for that frequently get neglected. Here are a few actual non-profit organizations that I think should get some attention for future fundraisers:

• BRENT MUSBERGER FOR PRESIDENT ‘96 campaign fund

• WE ARE THE WORLD League of American Football – donations needed badly

• THE JEFFERSON MEMORIAL – collecting to place a large bronze statue of Sherman Hemsley in Washington, D.C.

• THE S. SHEPARD LEGAL DEFENSE FUND FOR HOMELESS SOCIALIST MINORITY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WHO DON’T LIKE GRITS

• KOOL-AID – collecting money to find new jobs for the members of “Kool & the Gang”

• FREE JAMES BROWN!

• JAIL MONTEL WILLIAMS!

• ROBBY KRIEGER MEMORIAL PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT FUND – for people who think Jim Morrison was “an American Poet”

• THE MARCH OF DRACHMAS – for disabled children in Greece

• SQUIRRELHOLICS ANONYMOUS – I won’t explain it, but it’s sad

Or what about a truly deserving cause founded right here at the UR? An idea of mine is to take up a collection to hire a hit man to get rid of the annoying kid from those “Encyclopedia Brittanica” commercials.

Maybe this is all the inevitable result of me, getting old and grumpy. But please consider it, won’t you? Please send contributions to:

Death to That Annoying Kid From Those “Encyclopedia Brittanica” Comercials Fund

c/o The Collegian, Espionage, Sabotage, and Asassination Dept.

Tyler Heinous Commons, 14th Floor

Richmond, The University, 90125

By Jeffrey Carl

It occurs to me now that topical humor from college campuses nearly 30 years ago does not age well. I’m sure it was absolutely hilarious at the time, though. Enjoy!

A lot of people do a lot of complaining about Rush, the process by which fraternities and sororities accept new members. It seems that the University’s administration is perpetually changing the rules or whatever and nobody’s sure if it’s dry or if they’re allowed to put lemon flavoring in the kegs or what. 

Well, I, for one, really dig Rush. I firmly believe that Rush is one of the best things you can do with your time and that it isn’t in the least an enormous hokey waste of time or something like that. 

In fact, I think that it shouldn’t be just Greek organizations, but that all campus organizations of any kind should have a Rush.  Imagine the benefits to society in general.

Rush is usually composed of several nights of schmoozing events, followed by an invitation-only or preference party and then a day when invitations to join (bids) are given out. For example, my fraternity’s Rush schedule this year looked pretty much like this:

Day 1: Get-Really-Drunk-And-Forget-Everybody’s-Name-You-Met-Last-Night Party, 8:00 P.M.

Day 2: Acoustic Night with a depressing folk singer, 9:00 P.M.

Day 3: Meet the Brotherhood Awkward Conversation/Binge Drinking Party, 8:00 P.M.

Day 4: Guys-Only Invitational Sausage Party, 4:00 P.M.

Day 5: Bids Extended/Frenzied consideration about whether we were telling you the truth about pledging just being our putting stuff on your doors and buying you presents or if we were really pulling your leg

Or something like that, anyway. This truncated membership induction process is obviously the scientifically-concluded optimum way to meet new members, or else the administration wouldn’t have mandated it. So why doesn’t everybody do it? What might it be like if everybody had a Rush?

BETA BETA BETA (Biology Honor Society) RUSH:

Day 1: Special Lab Section: Can You Break Down the Amino Acids in Taco Bell?, 12:00 A.M.

Day 2: Dissection Night with Milwaukee’s Beast, 11:00 P.M.

Day 3: Karaoke Night, 9:00 P.M.

Day 4: Bids Extended/Lab Reports Due

“THE WEB” (YEARBOOK) RUSH:

Day 1: Get-Crazy-with-a-Keg-of-Shasta Party, 4:00 P.M.

Day 2: Karaoke Night, 9:00 P.M.

Day 3: Rock with Web house band, “The Typos” 6:30 P.M.

Day 4: Bids Extended

Day 9: Bids Received

UR WRITING CENTER RUSH:

Day 1: Meet the Third Person Plural Construction Cookout, 2:00 P.M. 

Day 2: Karaoke Night, 9:00 P.M.

Day 3: Acoustic Night with Writing Center house band, “The Passive Voice” 3:00 P.M.

Day 4: Bids extended/Spelling and grammar mistakes corrected and returned

UNIVERSITY COMPUTING RUSH:

Day 1: Karaoke with Herbie Hancock Night, 3:00 P.M. 

Day 2: Guess-Where-in-the-United-States-are-the-Macintosh-Parts-You-Ordered-Six-Weeks-Ago Party, 5:00 P.M.

Day 3: Get-Zany-with-a-Keg-of-Intel-80486-33MHz-Microprocessors Party, 1:00 A.M.

Day 4: Bids E-Mailed

JEPSON SCHOOL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES RUSH:

Day 1: Invitational Karaoke Night, 9:00 P.M.

Day 2: We-Have-the-Most-Expensive-Lodge-On-Campus Party with Jepson house band “The Rolling Stones” 7:30 P.M.

Day 3: Drinkin’ Malt Liquor with Norman Schwarzkopf Party, 3:00 A.M.

Day 4: Bid Applications Due

CAB (CAMPUS ACTIVITIES BOARD) RUSH

Day 1: Karaoke Night, 8:00 P.M. 

Day 2: Acoustic Karaoke Night, 8:00 P.M.

Day 3: Zydeco Swamp Music: Okeefenokee Karaoke Night, 8:00 P.M.

Day 4: Bids Extended by Karaoke

WILL (WOMEN INVOLVED IN LEARNING AND LIVING) RUSH:

Day 1: Equal-Rights-Does-Not-Necessarily-Mean-Mandatory-Castration Cookout, 2:00 P.M.

Day 2: Acoustic Night with depressing feminist poets, 8:00 P.M. 

Day 3: Karaoke Mixer with VCU Men’s Studies Department, 8:30 P.M.

Day 4: Bids Extended/Information and Bitc … I mean, Complaint Session

INTERVARSITY CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP RUSH:

Day 1: Meet Your Maker cookout, 4:30 P.M.

Day 2: Fish and Loaves picnic, 2:00 P.M.

Day 3: I-Found-the-Lord-and-Lost-my-Talent: Christian Rock Night, 7:00 P.M.*

Day 4: Bids extended by the Angel of Death

Day 7: Day of Rest

Wouldn’t life be much more exciting? I suspected as much. The point of all this being that Rush is a really fantastic thing and I don’t think that it’s possible to take it too seriously and it is obviously something everybody should do all the time or at least complain about profusely. Seriously. I’m not kidding.

Well, maybe I’m kidding a little.

*Special thanks to P.J. O’Rourke

By Jeffrey Carl

This was my first “humor” column for the University of Richmond Collegian. I was a Journalism Major and at the time the Greek Life Editor in my Junior year so I leveraged that immense power and influence to get an opportunity to fill in an open below-the-fold 1/3 page in the recesses of the Opinion section. At the time, few thought it would be an important debut to the world of comedy writing. These people were entirely correct.

We here at The Collegian pride ourselves on being responsive to our readers. And so I thought I’d take a few minutes and respond to some of the suggestions we have received from you, the readers, and show that we don’t just throw away all the mail we get that doesn’t include a sexual preference. In fact, all letters to The Collegian are read by every member of The Collegian’s staff, whereupon all spelling, grammar and style errors are circled in bright red ink and laughed at hysterically, and the writer is sent for a conference in the Writing Center. But here are a few of the more common suggestions we have received.

1. WHINING MORATORIUM

I. P. from New Jersey writes, “It seems that all anyone does at The Collegian is complain. Well, I’m sick of it! I hate complaining! Can’t you make it stop?”

Well, this is something that we have been looking at for a long time. The complaining endemic at The Collegian has come to grate on even the most embittered and cynical among us. A close friend of mine was one of the most prominent and renowned complainers last year. And as dear to me as she is, my fishing experience has taught me that when they’re flopping around and their gills have dried out, you should just whack ‘em on the head and get it over with.

One method proposed for dealing with constant complainers was a 25¢ fine to be assessed every time that a column contained the word “conformity,” “diversity,” “Rush,” “D-hall,” or “Shepard,” since they’re obviously bitching about something. This scheme was seriously considered until one of our more astute staff members pointed out that we don’t actually pay our columnists – maybe run by their rooms and throw some raw meat in or get their prescription re-filled.

The plan was then abandoned since these sanctions would leave the entire Collegian columnist staff either destitute or hanging on someone’s wall just below the swordfish, with the exception of the aforementioned Mr. Shepard, because we can’t figure out what he’s saying anyway, except for the part about grits. And we aren’t sure if he was complaining about them or not.

2. FUN WITH LIBEL

It has been said that the stories in The Collegian are of a none-too-sensational nature. Remarked B.S. from New Jersey, “The stories in The Collegian are of a none-too-sensational nature.” Well, we can do something about that.

“A B LORD BITES HEAD OFF LIVE RUSHEE!”

“LEONARD GOLDBERG ARRESTED FOR WAR CRIMES (WE GOT PICTURES! PICTURES!)”

“JEPSON CHECK BOUNCES! LEADERSHIP SCHOOL CLOSED!”

“‘WEB’ STAFF GOES WILDING! HUNDREDS MAIMED!”

Well, if you want stories like that, we got ‘em. How?  We make them up! Unfortunately, the printing of blatantly false inflammatory and defamatory (read “interesting”) stories is libel, which translates into getting our asses sued off.

However, if we raise the price of The Collegian to $25 an issue, we may be able to build up a legal defense fund large enough to provide the stories the public craves. Let us know if that sounds ok.

3. DIRTY PICTURES! PICTURES!

T.T. from New Jersey writes, “I have noticed that most quality publications are easily distinguished by the pictures of scantily-clad beauties inside. If you seek the same journalistic respect that the ‘Weekly World News’ and ‘Star’ receive, you’d better get on the ball in that area.”

Again, your wish is our command. Each issue of The Collegian will now feature a full photo spread of a different member of the senior Collegian editorial staff in a thong bikini, beginning next week with our design editor, Jason Roop.

4. WE’RE NO FUN

P.U. from New Jersey writes, “You guys are no fun.” Well, we agree, and we’re looking at several different promotional concepts to put the fun back in to college journalism.

a) Replace current staff with clever trained seals

b) Print issues in special ink; pass out decoder rings in D-Hall

c) Give away free campus dog with each issue

d) Install breathalyzer – no one allowed in Collegian office under .15 BAL

e) Issue written exclusively in mime

f) Special fold-out pages like “Mad” magazine that form dirty pictures of administrators

or, again,

g) Extra Roop centerfolds

Let us know which of these ideas you prefer. All submissions will be carefully considered and then fed to the trained seals. Remember, The Collegian is here to serve you, so send all suggestions to:

The Collegian

Tyler Haynes Commons, sixth floor

University of Richmundane

Krakatoa, Indonesia, 90210

Good night and God bless.