Page 2 The Oarion December 9, 1987
CLARION
Editor Biar Orrell
Assistant Editor Bill Meiners
Editorial Page Editor April Woods
Sports Editor Kim Belanger
Advertising Director Jim Barker
Staff Reporters Andrea Henry, Dorsey Waldron, Carlisle
Turner, Jay Schulthess, Danny Perry, Kenny Monteith, Pat
Mellon, Mike McGee, Julia Love, Juan Kincaid, Kathy Har
bin, Heather Conrad, Jay Carter, Selena Lauterer, Mark
Brom, Lee Hegge, and Celia Alves.
Faculty Advisor jock Lauterer
Commentary
A very special Christmas
by April Woods
Christmas is going to be very special this year.
The Christmas holidays to me have always meant being together with
family, and this year, that togetherness is going to mean even more than
it usually does.
My family has just learned that my father has been assigned to what
the Army calls an 18-month, “unaccompanied tour” in South Korea. He
could go accompanied (with his family), but because of the expense in
volved, the government has made it manditory for all accompanied
over-seas tours to last a minimum of three years.
My brother Michael will be 15 years old in April and is a freshman in
high school. A move to Korea now would mean three years in a boarding
school in a strange country for him, and then a return to the States to
complete his last year in high school in a strange place.
For that reason, among several others (safety for example). Dad is
going alone.
My mother said to me the other day, “People don’t realize what
military people and their families sacrifice so they can have a safe
country to live in.”
Mom cried while I was home for Thanksgiving, and I know she will do
a lot more crying between now and when Dad leaves. This is the longest
assignment Dad has been given away from home (He is in Washington
for three weeks right now. He’s getting home just in time for Mom’s bir
thday). Mom knows from experience that once Dad leaves, the crying
will stop, but 18 months...
This is going to be a very special Christmas.
Editorial
The Mellon Patch
Good news, America:
Bad News is here
What are we doing here?
by BUt Orrell
Six students were dismissed from
Brevard College as a result of having too
many points on their records.
The entire ordeal was a loss and a shock
to many students. We find ourselves wrap
ping up the semester and going into the
holidays with excitement and confusion.
And as the story goes, visions of our
"sugar-plumed” futures dance through
^ heads. Our futures, yes, I sometimes
forget. It’s easy to get sidetracked when
you re enjoying life— or trying to avoid it.
But that is why we are here. We are the
future generaUon of the business world
the future economy of this country. Some
of us will build strong careers and strong
futures off of the foundation we are stan
ding on now.
As fun and free-feeling as it is to goof off
ana party, life is not a party. The electric
company will turn the power off if you
don’t pay the bills; the landlord will evict
you if the rent is always late.
They will not care that it was your birth
day and you blew the money. They will not
care that you had pneumonia and could not
pay the hospital bills, much less the rent.
Two or three years from now most of us
will be out in the real world— out of col
lege. The rules wiU be a bit different, but it
IS all the same game. The major difference
will be when it is your move, you have to
move because Uien you’ll not only be
wasting your own time but also someone
else’s.
We will all make mistakes and hopefully
most of us will learn and grow from them.
I ve made many and I’ve grown stronger
through each one. As one of the students
who was dismissed observed while talking
many
to Dean Witek, “I will make
mistakes, but I have a long life.”
The point is if you are here as a student
at EC and you are not serious about your
education, then you should not be here
now . Take off a couple of years and come
back when you’re ready.
There is nothing wrong with not being
ready. It is only wrong when you are
wasting other people’s time and money. It
is really unfair to those of us who are ready
and who are serious about our futures.
I am not comdemning those students
who were suspended from school. Two of
them were very good friends of mine. I am
only stressing that we can’t forget why we
are here.
As someone always used to say to me:
“Is this getting you where you want to
go?”
by Pat Mellon
Since I recently made my rapping debut
here, I thought I’d write about it.
I started writing raps in high school.
Nothing special- just some basic lyrics.
I’ve always had good meter, and I’ve
always had the ability to make the right
words rhyme, (see?)
When I got to college, my roommate and
I rapped a little, but he left to go to school
somewhere else. Finally, after a cruel
summer of rapping alone. I teamed up
with Rick West, a friend of mine who goes
to the University of South Florida. Rick
and I had been friends all through high
school, and we were on the newspaper
staff together. He wrote sports and I wrote
editorials, but I remember when we col
laborated and wrote a satire together.
Our styles meshed beautifully and we
produced the kind of side-splitting
material the writers on The Johnny Carson
Show fantasize about.
Rick awed me with his rhetoric, and baf
fled me with his ideas. He was definitely a
word-master, and I could think of no one
better for the job. So last summer, we
teamed up. Mellon, West, and a battered
Casio keyboard with a drum machine. We
dubbed ourselves BAD NEWS, and started
writing immediately.
In August, we went to a recording studio
and made a demo tape which included
“We Like Women” and “There Was A
Girl.” Here’s a sample:
“Now, I don’t like cheaters, or vicious
wife-beaters, I don’t like stinky feet so I
bought some Odor-eaters/ I don’t like to
choose, I don’t sing the blues, people laugh
at me ’cause I don’t tie my shoes/ There
was a girl named Heather, she wore tight
leather, she made me feel so good when we
were together./ Just a bowl of Lucky
Charms, and a woman in my arms, a great
big house with burglar and smoke alarms/
the babes are stakin’ out my home, they
come from Sweden, France, and Rome,
I’ve got enough babes to fill the
Astrodome/ There was a girl named Cara,
hot as the Sahara, she wore a lot of lipstick
and a lot of mascara.”
Since then, we’ve written several more
raps, like “Babe Hunt.” It would seem
that our only inspiration is our libidos.
We’ve been called crude, we’ve been call
ed sexist, we’ve been called vulgar, and
we’ve been called brilliant. (I called us
brilliant.) True, the majority of our sub
ject matter is focused around the Y
chromosome, but that’s not all we rap
about. (It just appears first on the writing
priority list.) Other titles include “How Do
I Look?, “Do Me Right” and “The Rent.”
When I think about rap music, four
names come to mind. Bad News is first, of
course, but unfortunately, we lack the
media coverage of some of the bigger
names.
As far as I’m concerned, Run DMC is the
best. They really didn’t get off the ground
until they did “Walk This Way” with
Aerosmith, but I have several of their
older albums, and to me, they’re superior
to their peers.
Then there’s The Fat Boys. Like Run
DMC, they can attribute their recent suc
cess to their work with another band.
“Wipe Out,” with the Beach Boys, was an
interesting submission from the Obese
Three, but their original material just
doesn’t pack the potency that I’ve come to
expect from rap music. I think it’s a feat
in itself, however, that guys that big can do
anything beside put food away.
I did purchase the new Fat Boys album
“CRUSHIN,” but later, fed it to my cat.
Also exploding onto the rap scene of late
is L.L. Cool J. His new album “Bigger and
Deffer” is apparently doing well, thanks to
a rap-ballad called “I Need Love,” L.L.
should’ve called this song “I Need Talent”
or “I Need Rhymes” because I think it’s
the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. There’s
another song on the album called “I’m
Bad” which starts out with the line “No
rapper can rap quite like I can / I take a
muscle-bound man and put his face in the
sand...” First of all, L.L. champ, can and
sand don’t rhyme— it’s a slant rhyme,I
know, but if you can rap better than
anyone else, it seems to me that you could
think of something to rhyme with CAN.
Plus, what does having the ability to rap
have to do with being able to put a muscle-
bound man’s face in the sand? I’ve seen
pictures of your scrawny self, L.L., and a
muscle-bound man would bury you, and
I’d be right behind him, laughing and rapp
ing.
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