DTH Columns

Apr. 20, 2005 — How to bid farewell to an icon … or not
(Cut Version)

Somebody told me that they write columns here, and I had an idea for a column about this writer, who's ready to send himself off in style, but then the column evaporated, because it turned out that this writer (drop to a conspiritorial whisper) is a procrastinator.

I had big plans for this. Really I did.

I could have written one last topical column about some pressing issue in the
sports world, but I figure I'll leave that one to my boy Dan Blank on Monday.
He wins awards for those things while I'm just sitting back and watching from
my View on the Couch.

I could have waxed poetic about my four years here at The Daily Tar Heel and
the opportunities it hass afforded, like sitting behind the Illinois bench as
North Carolina won the national championship and my nifty little internship
at MLB.com.

I could have pointed out that I couldn't cheer at the championship, spent way
too much time in this office and that while maybe I've got a job for now,
after five years, you'll be making good money, while I'm cooking
10-for-a-dollar packs of ramen as I prepare to motor off to a high school
football game in the middle of West Nowhere.

Okay, maybe East Nowhere.

I could have been incredibly self-indulgent and spent the entire column
shouting out random people like my fellow inmates at The Garystrasse,
everyone in AEPi, all 17 Rachels I know from Hillel, and then Sara, Cynthia,
Aaron, Scott and the rest of the New Yorkers gettin' derrty down South … Oh,
wait.

I could have gotten serious, gone political and made a call to action on a
world issue, like say, the genocide currently taking place in the Darfur
region of Sudan — but I'll settle for asking you to go to www.savedarfur.org
and educate yourself.

I could have tried to sum up what four years in Chapel Hill are like after
spending 18 in Brooklyn, and why — even though I now acknowledge that the
South and small towns are quaint and enjoyable places to be for a time — I'm
still going to keep fares on the Metrocard in my pocket.

I could have tried to load this column with pop culture references like they
were nude self-pics  on Vida Guerra's Sidekick.

I could have done a detailed statistical analysis proving once and for all
that no matter how successful women's basketball is, the same 300 fans will
be the only ones who know that Carmichael replaced the metal bleachers with
stadium seating.

I could have written about how it's good for Matt Doherty that he's got a job
in a low-pressure, no-lose situation, because we all saw what happened when
what he did actually mattered.

I could have been above taking cheap shots at easy targets, but hey, it's
called karma — somebody titled a folder "Couch's Mom" on the DTH server.

I could have killed them, but I thought it was funny, too.

I could have been completely irrelevant to my audience and ranted about how
it's not Stephon Marbury's fault that the two last teams he's left have
completely reloaded that summer.

I could have done you, the reader, a favor by making this column coherent,
constructive and productive instead of an unfocused, rambling mess.

Maybe I couldn't have done anything else.