Okay, this probably is not going to be one of my better colum-ns. There is a small amount of free time; things academical in nature possess it. That said, let's dive in.
Newcomb Hall is a great place. It's like the throbbing heart of Grounds. You have your Honor and your UJC and your StudCo all based there and other organizations (University Programs Council, Mediation Services, Leadership Consultants and the like) live on the first floor.
The Pav offers a tantalizing variety of foods, and the cookies are incredible. Then, of course, there's the dining hall. Now, there isn't much to be said for dining hall food. This is almost in the nature of things; any institutionally mass-produced food is not going to really attain a high standard of quality.
However, it has recently been brought to my attention that the food side of the dining hall offers, as acclaimed dining hall scholar Ross Baird put it, almost a precise culinary parallel to Manny Ramirez. Just as Manny (who once played for the Indians in my beloved Cleveland) has few or no talents or even competencies outside of his extraordinary proficiency with a bat, the dining hall has few or no apparent particular virtues in the production of eatables and drinkables, with one glorious exception: the sweet tea.
This sweet tea is so good, it's almost painful. I had never consumed it until I was introduced to the inner mysteries of the cult of the tea by some friends of mine who occupied many minutes of a lunch entirely with bellowed praises of the liquid. Now, I'm generally a fan of tea in its various forms, but I've never really considered sweet iced tea to be a particularly attractive option as far as thirst-quenching goes. In this, I may have made the biggest mistake of my life.
This sweet tea is brewed for the palate of the ultimate gourmet. I am told that the dining hall staff even forgoes the standard mixing-in of sugar to actually boil sugar into the liquid as it is being brewed, a succulent technique that produces almost mind-boggling results.
Statistical tea expert Tim Lee has, after exhaustive study, determined that the tea-to-sugar ratio is almost precisely perfect for human taste buds.
Now, I know little about such scientific approaches to tea. All I know is that some nights ago, I was dining very alone, and I had completed my meal when the sweet tea dispenser caught my eye. Remembering this bizarre conversation I heard about its glories, I obtained a glass and sat down. I looked at it, scoffed and sipped.
My world changed. Each sip was like a delightful caress. I couldn't believe how good it was. Every time I raised the glass, I thought to myself, "I must have been imagining it. This sip won't be as good." And yet each was better than the last. We salute you, Mr./Mrs. Newcomb Hall Sweet Tea Brewer.
One of the many oddities which I have touched on in my columns this year but have yet to explore has to do with the peculiar institution which here at the University I think we could label the "un-celebrity." These are individuals who become famous Grounds-wide for their individual decision to buck the seemingly irresistible weight of our social norms and depart from our society as a whole in some manner and, by this defiance, attempt to find their own path. In so finding, however, they draw so much attention to themselves that, in some circles at least (or maybe just with me), they become, ironically, famous.
There is, for example, the Barefoot Man, the gentleman who wanders around Ground without shoes, or the justly legendary Boombox Man (all fellow devotees of the boombox, please join the facebook group "boombox-on-the-shoulder guy rocks!")Recent weeks have brought to my attention a new and as-yet unknown anti-hero, who, for lack of a better term, we shall call Weird Food at Newcomb Guy. This gentleman, I have been told, has chosen to combat the general consistency of the dining hall food's horrendousness by combining various unappetizing foods to produce a new and entirely undiscovered dish. My sources indicate that his art has become so sophisticated that he combines cereal and taco ground beef with milk and possibly some salad ingredient. Such creativity cannot go unsung. We salute you, Mr. Weird Food at Newcomb Guy.
Also, allow me to express my rage at the slow-walkers who made me late to class two days ago. Some band of fools blocked the entire sidewalk while a steady line of traffic kept me pinned behind their hefty thighs, tearing my hair out as they oozed like a Jell-O mold in the general direction of central Grounds. Hundreds of yards separated them from the nearest person in front of them, but did it occur to any of their primitive brains that perhaps they should pick up the pace? Of course not. I found myself wishing for an Ice Age; these people would never be able to outrun even the slowest of glaciers. It was abominable.
So thank you, Slow-Walking Band of Simian Throwbacks. Thanks to your bizarrely low location on the evolutionary ladder, I was severely inconvenienced. I don't know what we'd do without you. Jefferson would be proud, although he might suggest you peel back those jowls covering your eyes to examine the quote about strong bodies and strong minds writ in letters of fire in the AFC. Important stuff, you guys.
Lastly, my friends, playing right now on HBO is one of the greatest things that has ever happened on television, a series that goes by the divine name "Deadwood." I am obsessed with the show even more than I am obsessed with reality TV. I recently took my first hesitant step into the world of facebook group-creation by founding the group "HBO's Deadwood is Delightful." If any of you have ever heard of this show, or even simply want to shore up my abused sense of self-worth, please join. Please. Thank you all. It's a pleasure, as always.
Connor Sullivan may be reached at sullivan@cavalierdaily.com.
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