THEO HUXTABLE'S PROTEGE returns from spring break

A hearty welcome back to the Bull City of Durham, though, considering how many Duke undergraduates begin desperately counting the days to spring break by the beginning of February, I'm not sure how gleeful everyone is to be back. There are many reasons to be thrilled about returning to Duke, definitely, but then you do come back, only to find that "Duke Rocks" is still the men's basketball team's slogan for this year. My gosh! "Duke Rocks?" Is this 1997? What? Really, atop the list of People Who Should Be Fired, you'd have to put the guy who does the Duke basketball poster slogans. Other gems of his include "United," the Duke women's basketball slogan in 2001-2002, which turned out to be quite appropriate until two players transferred from the team a couple weeks after the posters came out. It still worked, but you had to cut their faces out of the picture like some bitter ex-girlfriend to make it make any sense. Maybe they should have gone with "Confederated" instead. Speaking of the Confederacy, another awesome Duke poster, from a few years ago, depicted the basketball players standing in front of a plantation house, with the caption, "Tradition." Umm--wow. But this guy's had some other recent hits as well. While "Deja Blue" was just a lame dud, the highlight has certainly been the one, the only, "Netrageous." It was the women's basketball slogan for 2000-2001. I have no idea what it means.

Anyway, many students traveled by plane over spring break, which brought them face to face with the obvious question, "Why is there so much porn at airport newsstands?" Can somebody explain this to me? Do guys buy it to look at in the gate in case their flight's delayed? Is it intended for quick trips to the lavatory while in the plane? What's going on here? Of course, these days, most regular magazines are trashier than porn anyway, so it doesn't really make a difference. In fact, People and US magazines now have an additional competitor in the ever-excellent glossy tabloid genre. It's called InTouch, and they sell at our very own RDU airport. Stylists and dentists everywhere are thrilled at another chance to let their clients pry into the lives of uninteresting celebrities. Help! Airports also show off the latest entries into the "men's magazines" and "women's magazines" categories, both of which coincidentally offer us the exact same assurance that beauty is not actually an internal possession, but is really just a result of one's external physical appearance. Better apply the correct makeup!

Many Duke students went to the beach this past week, which is an excellent opportunity to relax away from the Duke crowd, unlike Myrtle Beach in May, which is an excellent opportunity to drive 225 miles away and still be overrun by SUVs with Duke window clings on them. Hopefully, Duke students found a better city than North Myrtle Beach, which is pretty much just one city block repeated about 70 times. Not a good city block, either. Unless you like pancake houses and "Wings" boutiques.

But concerning all the preceding incoherence, a question that sometimes pops into THEODORE HUXTABLE PROTEGE'S mind in the writing of this column is, "What is the point of this column?" I guess I probably should establish this before continuing any further in the semester. Some have interpreted Monday, Monday's purpose as, "Insult Larry Moneta again and again." So they did it, again and again. Now, admittedly, Moneta's tenure has not been perfect. In alleviating the social dominance of fraternities at the expense of independents on West Campus, they forgot that, whoops, independent residential life here sucks! Well dammit. Maybe fixing that should have been a priority. Correct. But, importantly, at least West Campus is no longer just a slick euphemism for "white campus." Unfortunately, Western civilization is still just a euphemism for white civilization (um--looking at a map here, and just not seeing it, guys), but first things first. But rather than examine the reasons why West Campus was altered (such as the fact that a large part of the student body felt no connection with it whatsoever, and was quite often repulsed by it), last semester's column chose to rip the new arrangement at every turn. Not to attempt to contradict the adolescent truism that insulting the administration is always cool, but it takes a lot of chutzpah to hammer someone attempting to make some real changes you apparently don't understand, then tell the students it's taken "guts" to do so. Guts? What were they worried about, getting detention? No, we're still not in junior high. And I don't think I'd seen that much resistance to racial integration since Orval Faubus stood in the doorway of Little Rock's Central High in 1957.

So, what is the purpose of this column? Well, at the risk of sounding like an English major, the column is, as I see it, generated in the tension between the potential of this school, represented by Sy-(Snootles)-and-the-Rambli-(Root-Beer)-Gnome, and the reality of the school, represented by, well, the school. It is also an attempt to put into text the qualms of the many people I have spoken to who have never felt they fit in here and never had a way of expressing their ideas. And finally, it is an opportunity to make superfluous, excessive references to music I really dig substantially, such as the incredible band whose name, via assonance, serves as the origin of the non-parenthetical part of Sy's name. Oh, assonance, by the way, has the word "-ss" in it, which is pretty cool.

THEODORE HUXTABLE'S PROTEGE wished to name his/her column "TALing It Like It Is," but found that, alas, this title had already been taken by Tal Hirshberg. So, as a tribute to Mama's and Papa's leader Papa John Phillips, for his work in the production of the best event in the history of the universe, The Monterey International Pop Festival (1967), s/he decided to call it "Monday, Monday" instead.