The Gipper would just like to make four key points: 1) Boston College, Michigan, Boston College. 2) There comes a time to move on. 3) A mid-season retirement is not dishonorable. 4) Jimmy Johnson is available.
BETTER THAN ICE CREAM
Since Scholastic is the dinner magazine, the Gipper is taking a perverse pleasure in including this tidbit first. An official North Dining Hall worker reported this incident to the Gipp: one evening, he was coming to the end of his shift when some lady told him to fill up the Yo-cream machines. He dutifully went to the Yo-cream pumpers and opened the top of the vanilla side. What to his wondering eyes did appear but a large, still-living, squirming horsefly in the Yo-cream. Disgusted by this, he opened the chocolate side and was disappointed to find that there was only a thick layer of green mold around the top of the tank (nothing exciting). Fearing a fatal illness if he continued this work, the dining hall worker responsibly passed the job to a junior member of the staff, but is sure that the fat fly and the mold were undoubtedly pushed into the Yo-mix in a very sanitary clean-up method.
BIKE FOR THE AGES
When he is not writing his bitter and sarcastic gossip column, the Gipper has to do academic work like every other non-athlete. For about the past year and a half he has noticed the same rusty, old, beat-up bike chained outside his favorite Hesburgh Library. What's with this thing? Is it the sacred bike Father Sorin rode here from France? Since the maintainance people seem to be too good to get rid of it the Gipp has a suggestion for all his campus watchers: every time you go by the Sacred Bike of Sorin, exercise a little tension reliever and rip, kick or punch some piece of the bike off and take it home as a lovely souvenir.
And speaking of the Hesburgh Library (which the Gipp thinks would make a really good design for a Pez candy dispenser if the bookstore were into cheap merchandising gimmicks, which of course they're not), the Gipper was walking through the turnstile to go into the library the other day. You know, the turnstile next to the friendly security guard who pulls out his mace when you dare to walk through with a can of Coke or a Twinkie. Well, the Gipper was walking through the turnstiles, past the guard, when he turned to see two subway alums walking through the turnstile, being cordially greeted by the guard and proceeding to the elevators. The only problem was that the woman was carrying a dog. Now, either the Gipp and all the students at Notre Dame can bring their pets to study with them, or the guards' eyes are only good enough to see Coke cans, but not dogs.
DR. FUNSTEIN, PH.D., PART II
A few weeks ago, the Gipp told everyone about a business professor who lets his students take his sports car out on class time. Well leave it to the College of Arts and Leisure to top that. In an effort to have just one more "Live-It-Experience" touchy-feely assignment, Professor Rebecca Bordt, who teaches criminology, gave her students this wicked-hard assignment: do something criminal. There were students flashing passing cars on Edison Road, burning du Lac, stealing copy machines and rolling them back to the classroom by stealth, and drinking booze and smoking cigs in their DeBartolo classroom. The party was stopped when a DeBartolo building director saw a burning du Lac and hit the fire alarm. But before the show was over, several students pulled off what the Gipper considers to be some really classy and really criminal moves: one group entered a random philosophy class in DeBart, told the professor they were there to observe his teaching and proceeded to light up cigarettes and cigars while laughing raucously at the teacher (the professor, however, was not flustered because business teachers frequently crash philosophy classes just to smoke and laugh). And the "You're Going To Hell" award of the day went to the kids who ran down to the Grotto and blew out candles. Gipp's hint: watch out for stray lighting bolts.
That's it, that's all for this week. So for now the Gipper will go back to consoling himself with the knowledge that seven years passed between Ara Parseghian's two championships, and 11 years passed between 1977 and 1988. Still Ara only lost 17 games in 11 years here -- Holtz has lost 21 games and he hasn't even completed 9 seasons.
ALWAYS WELCOME
THE PHOTO'S COMING, I PROMISE -- -- L.o.t.G.
Leave it to SUB to invite only the most tasteful and classy acts to Notre Dame's very own Stepan Center (which, by the way, looks like something that aliens landed there -- could explain several administrators). Anyway, as an artistic addition to their show, the Indigo Girls' opening act, Band de Soleil brought with them displays of colorful condoms for sale. The Gipp's picture above does not really do justice to the number of rubbers they had, or to the fact that throughout their show Band de Soleil frequently threw the prophylactics out into the crowd. Now Billy Joel was forever banned from campus for singing "Only the Good Die Young" in the hallowed Stepan Center, so the Gipper can only imagine that Band de Soleil must be on someone's "Don't Ever Come Back Here" list.
The only real question left in the Gipper's mind: what were they expecting or desiring when they brought baskets of condoms to Notre Dame? Did they have images of being rushed by hundreds of strapping, young Indiana farm boy/scholars?