People keep asking me to continue my Blog which I quit last fall when I got busy with all that Colbert Report interning nonsense. The weirdest thing is, for all the people who have asked me to continue it (an amount nearing the double digits), I'm not sure any of them were actual readers back when I wrote in here (an amount nearing the zero digits). Oh well, maybe I will get back to doing this thing regularly. Nothing's impossible.
In the mean time, please enjoy this article I wrote for the Rutgers Review (which I am now the Humor Editor for).
Before I post it, here's a little backstory. About a month ago, The Medium, the satire magazine at Rutgers, wrote an article attacking our little alternative rag. Never being one to back down from a fight, our fearless Editor-in-Chief, Dave, asked me to write a response. The following is said response and was printed in our April issue:
A couple of weeks ago, Rutgers’ satirical mainstay The Medium wrote a blistering critique of our little rag in an article entitled “The Rutgers Review Will Make Your Eyes Bleed” written by one of their top writers, Holden Kox. For those of you who missed it, it begins with the lines “Am I the only one who realizes how much of an utter piece of shit the rutgers review [sic] is? I can’t even come close to describing how much fuckin [sic] dick this shit sucks…” and continues for nine brilliantly worded sentences of harsh (but fair) denigration.
What makes the article so funny (besides the obvious wit and ingenious turns of phrase) is the fact that I, a humble writer for the Rutgers Review, was in the room as it was being written. For you see, dear reader, I spent an entire week amongst these stalwarts of satire, these wizards of wit, these visionaries of the written voice. This is my story. This is…
Medium Like Me
By Jon Borshadt
It all started about a month ago when we, as an editorial staff, realized that we had gradually fallen behind the cultural milieu set by our peers at other publications on campus. Our quality was slipping while that of our rivals was marching ever upward. To paraphrase the esteemed Mr. Kox, our shit was very much beginning to suck dick.
We were most envious of the brilliance that was coming out of The Medium. Week in and week out they produced cutting edge material that we could only dream about. We felt like they were using the words that were on the tips of our tongues before we could even taste them. Once we flipped through the February 11th issue and caught sight of the amazing article, “Salmonella’s True Victim: Ball-Licking Dogs”, we knew something must be done.
The plan was simple: one of our writers would infiltrate the staff room of The Medium for a week and learn their secrets. It took an entire meeting to choose which of us would be the lucky one. Fortunately for me, I hadn’t showered in a few days so it was decided that I would fit in the best.
I was more excited than I had ever been in my entire life.
The day of my first meeting, I spent hours choosing what to wear. I had to look like I was one of them, but not like I was trying too hard. My choices were down to a shirt featuring a picture of Peter Griffin from Family Guy dressed like Han Solo and another one sporting a choice quote from the latest Dane Cook album. In the end, I just went with a dark red T-shirt with black text asking, simply, “Who farted?” It must have been the right choice because they accepted me into their group almost immediately.
Although their staff occupies the same meeting room as ours, it felt transformed by their presence. The keyboards seemed to sparkle with the glitter of infinite possibilities and the air was filled with the intoxicating mist of their jovial merriment. Plus, one dude had brought his Wii over so everyone could play “Brawl”.
They seemed thrilled by my presence. One editor remarked that I was their first new writer in over four months. This surprised me. With material so fresh and different in every issue, you’d think that they had a constant rotation of varied contributors vying for print space. Knowing that it was the same people every week just heightened my respect for the group.
After the initiation ceremony was over and I had washed the blood and orange Cheeto dust from my hands, we were ready to begin work on the latest issue. Or so I thought. You see, I quickly discovered that The Medium doesn’t write their paper like most normal publications. While they do meet routinely during the week to hang out and watch BSG, they don’t get around to the actual writing process until mere hours before the papers are sent to the printer.
How foolish I felt at that moment. Here I was, having already spent two whole days preparing for this article, and they were churning out masterworks like Jeremy Sam’s piece “WTF Poker? On TV? This Sucks!” in under five minutes. I was a sap in the presence of geniuses.
Finally the day came for us to actually begin work on what was to be the February 25th edition of the paper. I had a few article ideas in my notebook but I was too intimidated to share them with the staff. What if my meager suggestions like “Make the paper look more like a newspaper since it’s supposed to be a parody of newspapers” were deemed insufficient or “gay” by the veterans? I chose to keep my mouth shut.
For a while, everyone sat around in silence, until someone blurted out an article headline. His idea, “Shut Up, Lesbian Dyke in My Econ Class!” was classic Medium. Everyone had a good laugh although, in the end, the idea-man couldn’t come up with anything other than the title and the article was scrapped.
I realized quickly that I needed to say something if I wanted to be truly accepted by my peers. So I took a deep breath, raised my hand, and spoke.
“Isn’t the phrase ‘lesbian dyke’ redundant?”
Suddenly the room went silent. I could feel all the eyes in the room on me. All six of them. Was my mistake irreparable? Had I been found out already?
Luckily, the gods must have been with me that day because one of the writers stole the attention from my faux pas with an idea for an “Arts” section drawing. The image (which can be seen in the finished issue, directly facing the Rutgers Review critique) was to feature Phil and Lil, the adorable twins from the children’s series, Rugrats, engaging in incestuous sex while their friend Chuckie watches.
The mere premise stopped me cold. It was so wrong yet, in its very wrongness, so right. The brilliant cultural reference. The character expectations turned on their head. Everything about it was comedy at its very best.
After the group had congratulated the artist, who goes by Russian Mail Order Bride (in this article, I will respect the anonymity he uses for his work by referring to him only by his pen name), the conversation turned to whether or not Lil should be drawn with pubic hair. The worry was that, without it, the character might look too young which would go against the large breasts she was to have. In the end, however, the hair remained off the final drawing as none of the staff had ever seen a real woman’s vagina up close and could therefore not authentically capture the look.
After the drawing was done, I thought about pointing out that the artist had placed the word bubbles out of order (the one to be read first was on the right of the drawing) so that only a reader versed in Hebrew would get the joke. However, I didn’t want a repeat of the “lesbian dyke” debacle and kept silent.
Once the rest of the articles were written, the material still fell way short of the space requirements. I began to panic but the rest of the staff knew exactly what they were doing. They jumped on their computer and began to read the Medium e-mail account so as to fill the last quarter (two of the usual eight pages) of the issue with another great “reader shout out” section.
A lesser man would criticize the paper for doing this, citing the section as “lazy” or “unreadable”, but I know better. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into putting together the “Personals” part of each issue. For instance, one e-mailed comment used the word “nigger” three times, which made a few members of the staff uncomfortable. They all looked to the editor-in-chief for guidance, and he sat in silence, stroking his beard and sipping his Red Bull for a solid minute before imparting his decree.
“Edit it so that they only say ‘nigger’…twice,” he said. Everyone nodded solemnly at his sage advice.
After the reader comments were added in and the rest of the blank space was filled with multiple notes yelling at people to come to writer’s meetings, the entire work was handed to the design team. The design team consisted of a guy in a diaper named Randy who, up until this point, had been sitting in the corner, furiously masturbating.
Randy was like a master at a loom. With a few quick keystrokes on the computer, he had woven all of our crazy ideas into a beautiful tapestry, like the ones you see every Wednesday in your student centers.
You can’t imagine the pride I felt at that moment and throughout the rest of the week. I had contributed to something beautiful. Those wonderful creatures on The Medium editorial staff had accepted me as one of their own and allowed me to partake in a magical ritual that few people will ever be able to witness. And I will never forget my experience and the things I learned there.
However, the joy I felt while looking at those glorious stacks of papers, was matched by an equally great sense of sadness. For I knew that once that issue was printed, I would have to leave behind my new friends and also my new pen name, Holden Penis. I would have to return to the dank and depressing world of the Rutgers Review, complete with its rules and regulations and spell check.
I was still depressed a week later, when I sat down in class and flipped open The Medium’s next issue. I couldn’t help but smile. There, in the “Arts” section, Russian Mail Order Bride had completed another masterpiece. This one featured Scooby Doo and Shaggy having bestial sex while their friend Velma watched. Those guys still knew how to bring the comedy!
A few minutes later, as my professor droned on, I began to absentmindedly doodle in my notebook. Without even realizing it, I drew a drawing of Doug Funnie getting a blow job from his love interest, Patti Mayonnaise. The girl sitting next to me in class looked over and saw it.
“Eww!” she shrieked. “That’s disgusting!”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s funny.”
It’s funny.
Fun article, huh?A lot of people seemed to like it. The staff of The Medium liked it so much they wrote an article in their 4/8 issue congratulating "Jon Borshadt" in an article about a play that the real me was in. To be honest, it's one of the funnier things they've written in years. Of course, only about three people will get the joke. One of them is me.
Their article reads as follows:
The Medium would like to congratulate it’s own Jon Borshadt, aka “Holden Penis,” on the recent DVD release of “Dog Sees God,” where hegave enthralling performance in both of the production’s male on male scenes. “It’s really just a passion I have, you know,” he remarked during an exclusive interview. “I don’t even care about the critical acclaim, or how much it turns guys on when I charmingly smile while getting facefucked by a nine inch long black dick. Social norms? So what. I’m far too indie for those kind of riff-raff generalizations. Just because I have sex with men doesn’t make me gay, right?” He plans to advance his career in the industry after he graduates and is slated to be included in the cumshot scene of the $10,000 upcoming production of “Cock-hungry Cowboys III: No Cunt for Old Men.”
They even went as far as following through on my Doug Funnie idea. You can see the full issue (including their charming Doug drawing) on their website.
ps. I can't believe I typed up that dream post last night? I think the fact that transcribing a nightmare for the internet comforted me says more about my generation than a thousand thesis papers combined.
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