Stupid Shit Sarah Lawrence Say, Part 5: Saved By the Bell - The College Years

It’s a Sunday, and all of the Sarah Lawrence kids are camped out on the MacBook Airs their parents got them (literally, there are five laptops in the coffee shop, and all of them are Macs).  There is not a single seat available in the place.

Then these two girls come in. One wearing old army fatigues with East German patches (cause, you know, Democracy is dead and all that shit), the other looking like an extra from Saved By the Bell – bright red glasses, over-sized bow in her hair, old canvas backpack that was all the rage in the millennium that was (you know, the kind with the draw strings that never stay closed and the flap that rests lazily over the top).

They order coffee; a quiche for one, a muffin for the other. They are preparing to hunker down. But there are still no seats available. 

Two things quickly become apparent: One, that they don’t know how to react to this, the smallest morsel of adversity, and two, they want someone to pay attention to this, their overwhelming plight, to solve this impossible problem for them. 

Stupid Shit Sarah Lawrence Kids Say, Part 4: Allen Ginsberg vs. the One Percent

BACK AFTER A TWO YEAR HAITUS...

They stride into the coffee shop and he’s practically yelling, as if to negate any retort to the argument, “Your father’s a surgeon! He’s got money!” I thought it was a plot out of some James Cain story: the malleable, soft-spoken, innocent girl; the overbearing, one-sighted boyfriend. Does he want to murder the girls’ father and run off with her and the old man’s war chest? 

Hardly.

You’re probably wondering what he looks like, but the best way to sum him up is thusly: he asks for the student discount - 10% off his $2 cup of coffee, then inexplicably pays a 25 cent surcharge because he’s using his debit card. I can hear the excuse now…. “Well, I don’t have any REAL money….” Other than that: well-coiffed hair, with an attempt to look slovenly. Cuffs on his skinny jeans, scruffy beard, turtle shell glasses - his best Allen Ginsberg impression.

Stupid Shit Sarah Lawrence Kids Say, Part 3...

Shakespeare Edition 

This one is only one line long, but for the sake of explanation, I frame it with Lewis Black's bit about the line, "If weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college." Or, as he calls it, "the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life, until Dan Quayle was elected Vice President."

If you haven't heard it, you can find it here...

http://comedians.jokes.com/lewis-black/videos/lewis-black---college-horse

 I felt exactly the same way Lewis Black felt, and if I tried to explain it, well, blood probably would shoot out my nose...

So I walk into the coffee shop after really weird day. I just want to sip something warm and meditate. I sit at the only open table in the place, which happens to be a few feet from where three Sarah Lawrence girls sit, working on homework. They talk about various things, some boy that they think is cool, and they get on the topic of Shakespeare. Apparently one of them has issues with William Shakespeare. She says, and I quote

"I can understand why some people don't like Shakespeare. I mean, he's so, mainstream..."

 I'm going to repeat that, because it bears repeating...

"I can understand why some people don't like Shakespeare. I mean, he's so mainstream..."

Don't. Don't think about that sentence for more than three minutes, or blood will shoot out your nose. The American medical profession does not know why we get an aneurysm. An aneurysm is when a blood vessel bursts in your head for no apparent reason. There's a reason...

For my part, I had to get up and leave the coffee shop immediately. But those words are now in by brain forever.

Thank you, Sarah Lawrence, for validating stereotypes.

Stupid Shit Sarah Lawrence Kids Say, Part 2...

Thomas Jefferson: Hipster Friendly

It’s a classic Sarah Lawrence paradox: You go to the most expensive private school in America, and yet you’re a hipster. How do you simultaneously brag about how much money you have while demonstrating how unique you are? This is how…

A group of Sarah Lawrence students sit at a table in a coffee shop, doing whatever. There are three of them, perhaps all girls, perhaps not. One line that comes out is, “I used to do that when I was a girl, and now that I’m not a girl, I still do that.” Whatever, that's a digression in itself...

A fourth student comes in, definitely male -- pink knit sweater, purple polo shirt underneath. Completely unique. He pulls from his pocket a stack of fresh, crisp bills an inch thick, bound together with a blue hair tie.

“Check this out,” he says, flipping through the greenbacks like playing cards. Then he pulls one from the pile and hands it to one of the girls.

Stupid Shit Sarah Lawrence Kids Say, Part 1...

Study of an SLC boy/Cheetah Farmer’s Vainglorious Attempt to Get Laid, As Seen Through the Eyes of a Drunk Fly on the Bar…

(I copied the following virtually verbatim from my notebook. I sat on a barstool with a notebook, next two three Sarah Lawrence undergrads at the Station House on a Friday night. This is what I heard. I could have cleaned it up more, but I felt it more important to leave it as is…)

Isn’t it cute how the SLC boys try and talk about sports like they have a clue? Some attempt to display masculinity in front of his female companion. And it looked like he almost had a chance. Until her friend showed up. He tried to compensate by ordering the same drink as this perceived interloper. I was the only one who noticed, a different kind of interloper in this humorous exchange.

Too bad for him, the source of his efforts is a worthless pursuit, a typical Sarah Lawrence girl -- too preoccupied with talking to the older, wiser bartender about the cider that she is drinking, comparing the Magners to the Bulmers of Europe, her subtle way of displaying how she is a world traveler, or, in reality, a teenager who spent a year abroad. Everything is done so subtly. You’d hardly even notice if you weren’t paying attention.

Seeing his chances fading with her interest, the SLC guy walks away, to put a dollar in the juke box. Very clever.

A minute later, “oh, this is my song,” to get the attention back, and after a few notes, that canned hipster follow-up, “you probably don’t know this song.” Neither girl does. Score one point for the Sarah Lawrence boy.

“It’s New Order,” he says. I guess they’re too young to know who New Order is, but he obviously is not. It’s almost as bad a smokescreen as talking about cider with the bartender. So subtle.