• Format
  • Publications (documents)
• Type
  • Text
• Source institution
  • Western Carolina University
• Identifier
  • HL_WesternCarolinian_1981-10-22_Vol46_No09_02

Editorials Page 2 Rich Hall WCU Student On "Fridays" tor*' i So who says there isn't life after college'' Rich Hall, a former student at WCU and columnist for The Western Carolinian, is living proof there is life after college. And life in spite of college. And not only life. Comedy, too. Rich, author of the "10 Million Turkeys" column in The Carolinian in 1974-75, can now be seen each week on ABC-TV's "Fridays," the hottest comedy show on television since the demise of the original Saturday Night Live. His "big break" in the biz came several years ago, when he landed a writing job for David Letterman, the former nationally broadcast daytime talk show host. Rich made several appearances on the Letterman show and on The Tonight Show when Letterman filled in for Johnny Carson. His specialty was films. His funniest pieces used tiny plastic models of people filmed on household objects like electric toothbrushes, blenders and turntables. He made up a town for the little people called "Pitkinville, U.S.A." His growing following led to guest appearances last season on Fridays. Now he's a regular, filing reports from a fictional "Highway 6," which snakes its way across this great land. Once on Highway 6, Rich reported on a giant Scrabble game, with runners and rest stops along the road. He hung around 1972 and 1973 before he began writing for the Carolinian in 1974-75, when Dwight Sparks was editor. Rich's column was pretty far out and not very popular with the student body, because he tended to make WCU students look like idiots for the most part. Truth in journalism. Anyway, his column didn't quite sec the end of the year. He left Cullowhee by the end of the 75-76 school year. He left his simple frame house that still sits beside Harrill Dorm, striking out for bigger and better things. He said he was going to New York to make movies. And look where he is today. Appearing again in The Western Carolinian. He'd probably like to break my fingers for writing this. Attempts to reach Rich at ABC in Los Angeles this week were unsuccessful. An ABC secretary said the show was not in production this week and that Hall was out on the road, taping segments for later shows. But, assuming he won't ever read this, we'll go ahead and repring some excerpts from his old columns. But we won't touch a prize-winning story he wrote for The Nomad while he was here. Titled "The Secret Meaning of Things," the story was really funny. But it was also a direct rip-off of J.D. Salinger, author of 'The Catcher in the Rye." First, we must set the stage. The year is 1974, when it was actually FUN to go to school at Western. The Cats' football team went to a championship playoff against Louisiana State. WCU for a few days held the streaking record. Cotton Robinson was just selected chancellor to replace the hated "Texas" Jack Karlton. Pictures of nude women appeared in The Carolinian, as did cartoons by l.CBW and Tom Addison. The students rallied to fight against the construction of the Jackson County Airport. Erik Kirzingerand Brooks Sanders-Cullowhee'sanswer to Dr. Hunter S. Thompson — wrote for the paper. You get the idea. Back then, you used to have to travel 20 miles of two- lane roads to Waynesville in order to buy a beer legally. Hall wrote a three-part series on "Fear and Loathing in Waynesville," in which he calls Haywood County "the Twilight Zone of the Smokies." In a "Fall Course Bulletin," Rich described these class offerings in philosophy: "Specific inquiries are The Cosmos on Five Dollars a Day, Does God exist, and if so, where docs he eat? and Spinoza vs. Descartes — best two out of three falls"; abnormal psycology: "Deals with organic and functional disorders such as the ever-present fear of being followed home and sexually assaulted by a myopic Albanian dwarf dressed in leotards" and "why some people cannot pronounce the words pitutary glands in mixed company"; and elementary mathematical functions: "Binary Operations - how painful are they'.'" In another column. Rich kept alive the rumor that "Dodson Steak House" "features a revolving dome" and compares the steaks there to "the tenderness and texture of a well-oiled Spalding baseball glove." On the SGA, Rich wrote: "The idea of student government began as a joke between two students at Chicago University in 1910. Two poly-sci students and amateur gangsters, Joe (the Shark) Vitale and (Pepsi) Frank Columbraro (so-called because he ate bottle caps for breakfast) formed a coalition on campus that held strict control on all the composition notebook traffic in the Midwest." Once they gained control, the two "decided to legalize their coalition by giving it an administrative- sounding name, Studentio Governmentia (literally his pancakes or their pancakes). Vitale and Columbraro graduated some 20 years later but the idea of student government spread throughout American campuses like gonorrhea." Other columns by Rich traced the invention of the pizza by Zeppo Pasquale and its later history. When Zeppo meets Angelina Rizzuto, "She is to teach him all he knows about anchovies." Rich founds the nation of YEKRUT (turkey backwards), leads a revolution of turkeys who scratch out grocers'eyes and joins forces with penguins of S. Antarctica. Rich explained the title of his column in one episode. After reading "Eat Shit. 10 million flies can't be wrong on a WCU bathroom wall," Rich decided to run for student government. He dressed up in a gorilla suit and stood in front of the University Center handing out cards that said: "10 Million Turkeys can't be wrong. Vote Rich Turkey' Hall for SGA vice president." Undoubtedly the funniest column written by Rich in The Carolinian dealt with a large number of dope busts on the campus that year at the hands of SBI agent James Maxey of Sylva. Hall made milk - plain old cow's milk -- the evil behind heroin addiction. He quotes Dr. Philo Dendron of NYU as saying, "Ninety-something percent of junkies were milk drinkers." He was, of course, parodying figures linking pot smoking with heroin use. "Residence hall coordinators are urged to be suspicious of people with milk moustaches" who may have gotten some "stuff" from the "white market" run in "East Cullowhee" by "Big Daddy Borden" and in "West Cullowhee" by "Angelo Pet Rizzo." So don't fret, WCU freshmen. Even if you can't get the hell out of this suitcase college with a degree, you may yet amount to something. As Rich would have said. "Don't let a WCU diploma or transcript limit your future". And even if you don't amount to anything, you can still enjoy Rich Hall. He'll be on every Friday night for a while. Or you can go to the library and check up on some old Western Carolinians. WCU Football: Mice Or Men? by Mickey Mudd Em...eye...sea...kay...eee...why u must b from Cull...oh...eee. Hi gang! With the prediction of a 1-10 football season, we will have to face up to being the mickey mouse school of the conference. Last weekend's game reinforces this image when the cats lost in E.J. Whitmire litter box (has someone stolen one side of the box?). Our record will be nationally published when the cats play Florida State the 31st of this month. At the beginning of the season, many students might have believed the Florida game to be a chance for us to show how much power the southern conference packed. Now it looks like a chance to see how much our cats can be mauled. Prospective college students are looking for an institution with high academic standards and a favorable reputation. Football, being the popular sport that it is, provides a major vehicle for spreading a reputation for its school. A future student wants to know if a university will help prepare him for the standards the "real world" lives by; where success is rewarded and failure rejected. Our coach will not be rejected! It seems, the man in charge will not fire him (even though he is the only combination athletic director-head football coach in the state). Instead, the students and football players must bear the embarrassment of our leader's failures. On the other hand, if the students were to academically fail, they would be rejected from this university (most are given a second chance and last year our team did not average a 2.0). Some of our leaders have set standards for their departments. Most are now trying to improve since football budget cuts are the main reason our cats are doing so poorly according to the administration. I disagree; Donald is the problem, not the finances (remember he's the man who is paid to direct the team). I dread Thanksgiving Break because that's the time when I'm partying at the home town tavern with my friends from other schools. The boys are bound to mention what a joke WCU football was. They might badger me further by saying how next year our record will be the same because nothing will have changed. I would love to tell them that Mr. Duck will not be with us next year. Rather than lie, I will change the subject to basketball where Western's standards produce success rather than failure. Football is a joke until someone Jn our administration makes changes. Otherwise, for the next couple of years, we must hold our banner high and watch the image of our football cat turn to that of a mouse. Observations by E.G. Rhett "The next greatest misfortune to losing a battle is to gain such a victory as this!" Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. Recollections, 1859. Now that the annual Homecoming football game and other attendant frolics have come, gone, and got lost, we, who are considerate, must consider some fresh diversions to occupy our fancies and to entertain both us scholars and those who provide us financial support. Perhaps marble-shooting or tiddley-winks could do the job in springtime, but those occupations won't now excite many of us sufficiently as our cool weather sets in. Ping-pong, someone suggested, has promise, but 1 rather doubt that such a game would do the trick. What about trying a Southern Conference championship competition in the game of Chinese Checkers? In that arena. Our Cats could really become an international drawing-card. Think of the hordes of people of the World coming to our Plantation to play with marble balls on the triangles of a board about the size of regulation dartboard, rather than on a one hundred and twenty yard long rug! Surely it would be more fun to toy with those little glass spheres on a wooden frame than to play as the Pussycats did last Saturday. If the hick-town of Knoxville, Tennessee, can manage a World's Fair, 1 guess we can manage this equally curious activity. The only person who scored reasonably well at the Homecoming Business was the pretty young lady chosen (for whatsoever reason!) to reign as Queen of those goings-on. She laid such a magnificent kiss on the head of the High Foreman, whocrowned her, that his hair literally frizzled and the soles of his shoes completely dissolved! Good for you, pretty lady — you may have made the day with a tender kiss during the Pussycats' misplayed ballgame. There must be, as Plato put it in The Republic, "a fault in the bowl itself," when he noted the problems that become evident in the ordinary human being when he tries to be the "thinking animal" that we call ourselves. No other creature, as far as 1 have been able to gather, either names himself or anybody else, nor needs to do so. Why are we human-types so bothered? What will nomenclature and taxonomical tables eventually mean to an insect that has crawled from an ancient past, like the cockroach, to the present? A truly ingenious High Foreman might cure some problems if he were adequately to guide his henchmen to perform their tasks better (notably those related to athletics, whichcost so manydollars)! It is discouraging to see so many football games end in defeat when so many scholars' brains are burning to shine with excellence. As a Rhodes Scholar, a football quarterback, a record-making track runner, and a published researcher, I am hurt and bored to see such ridiculous activity as we were offered at the Homecoming game. Come on, Mr. High Foreman — it's time to clean up our act! VALETE!

The Western Carolinian is Western Carolina University's student-run newspaper. The paper was published as the Cullowhee Yodel from 1924 to 1931 before changing its name to The Western Carolinian in 1933.

• Creator
  • Western Carolina University
• Format
  • Publications (documents)
• Type
  • Text
• Date
  • Date original: 1981-10-22
  • Date digitized: 2019-02-14
• Extent
  • Dimension: 15" x 11.5"
  • Pages: 20 pages
• Subject - Topic
  • College student newspapers and periodicals
  • Cullowhee (N.C.) -- Newspapers
  • Universities and colleges -- North Carolina -- Cullowhee -- Newspapers
• Location
  • Jackson County (N.C.)
  • Cullowhee (N.C.)
• Source institution
  • Western Carolina University
• Source Collection
  • WCU Students Newspapers Collection
• Identifier
  • HL_WesternCarolinian_1981-10-22_Vol46_No09
• Repository
  • Western Carolina University Hunter Library