Chris Schlegel

Class of 2009



Article Collection

From the Editors

Chris Schlegel, Colin Pfeiffer, Max Maduka

1-800-GENOCIDE — Apr 11, 2008

Welcome Pre-frosh! Congratulations on your acceptance to [one of ] the most selective college[s] in the Ivy League!

From the Editors

Chris Schlegel, Colin Pfeiffer, Max Maduka

The House of Orange — Apr 18, 2008

Two-hundred and fifty seven days, folks. Two hundred and fifty-seven. Let it roll of your tongues—257—it won’t be long now.

Fun with Oulipo

Chris Schlegel

Unlikely Hellfellows — Sep 28, 2006

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We ...

Muldoon, Between the Tropics

Chris Schlegel

Autumn & its delights — Oct 12, 2006

To read good poetry is to pull a Band-Aid off a wound. I heard someone say that once.
Not a big wound, maybe just a paper-cut, where the skin puffs pink and new. When we remove the covering we return to our trauma, and the act is pleasurable, despite the ...

Perspectives on the Midterms

Chris Schlegel

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Nass Meeting — Nov 16, 2006

On CNN, I think, the election night coverage was titled ‘America Votes.’ I was watching and a friend next to me said, “No, it doesn’t.”
At face value, the descriptive statement ‘America Votes’ is false. America really doesn’t vote, at least not the majority that can. The sentence ...

Shit I’ve Been Doing

Chris Schlegel

Merry Christmas! — Dec 7, 2006

I know, I know, I haven’t written in a long while, but I wish for Chrissakes you’d stop yammering on about it. I have obligations, obli-fucking-gations, and there’s no getting around them. If you think for one second that I’m going to flake out on an ...

A Paean to Woods and Death

Chris Schlegel

Summoning of Fiendish Dire Borat — Nov 9, 2006

On autumn Sundays my parents would fuck wildly, like children. I remember this vividly. It was November and the air had begun to turn to steel. The turn was final. Pennsylvania does this each year—dies, maybe before Halloween, maybe after, gives way to night as a jack-o-lantern collapses to ...

Lines Removed From a Eulogy

Chris Schlegel

The Literary Issue — Dec 14, 2006

And what’s more there’d be too much to tell, with his folded-up face and our proximity, the fact that we’d lived so close to each other growing up, that in high school we’d mostly talk to the same girls and dress the same and find the ...

Combing through the Dogpile

Chris Schlegel

Bicker Makes Me Snicker — Feb 8, 2007

Alpha Dog, Nick Cassavetes’s new guns-‘n’-posses yarn, is predictably bad. That is to say, it fails where one might expect it to fail: cuts are alternately languid and meth-fueled, the dialogue stilted or overly gangish. In case you’re wondering, Justin Timberlake adds little to the production ...

In Mammoriam

Chris Schlegel

In Memoriam: Micawber — Feb 15, 2007

Between Fort Lauderdale and Miami lies the mid-size city of Hollywood, Florida, population 138,412. It’s an unassuming beach-front place in the regional mode. Encompassed are ten or so diners, several miles of coastline, several miles more of T-shirt and puka-shell vendors. Having survived hurricanes and the occasional squabble ...

Total Clipse of the Heart

Chris Schlegel

The Media Issue — Mar 8, 2007

People—especially dopey, two-months-behind-the-times columnists like the New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones—love making sweeping pronouncements about the nature of hip-hop. Music is a manifestation of the human creative spirit; it is born of a whole slew of political and economic circumstances. Duh. In that way it possesses import both ...

Tell Me Why

Chris Schlegel

Happy Easter — Apr 5, 2007

Gregg Gillis sits in the library of Terrace Club; a few minutes ago he was eating potatoes. He is of average height and has enormous white teeth. He speaks rapidly and giddily, as though school has just been cancelled.

The Verse Debate, Part 2

Chris Schlegel

TigerHead — Apr 26, 2007

Or rather, your notion of the face in Baudelaire is evasive.
Poetry’s stock has fallen; that of the novel, the short story—that of prose—has risen. The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books have run articles addressing the former and latter, respectively. But you survey ...

Simile

Chris Schlegel

The Literary Issue — May 2, 2007

I have written poems
pomes (pennyeach)
like pommes
as in pommes de terre
those roots with eyes—
and now I write
in my eyes, to my eyes
à mes yeux
which means
in another light
‘by my way of thinking’—
and so
to think of you
as something ...

A Yacht Club Party is Winding Down

Chris Schlegel

The Literary Issue — May 2, 2007

The last few bars
of a big-band tune
exposing themselves
without a hint of self-awareness
and the half-sober apercus of a gaggle
of twenty or so
be-sequined, be-suited
women and men of a certain age
their laughter playing
soft on the southwest wind
that is wrinkling the bay—
everyone saying ...

Shaking My Hips Dolefully

Chris Schlegel

Beirut issue — Sep 27, 2007

Beirut played at Terrace this Sunday. You might have heard him. You might even have been there, drinking, doing your thing. The place was crowded.

Jürgen Habermas Is Dead

Chris Schlegel

Jürgen Habermas — Oct 4, 2007

Jürgen Habermas, born June 19, 1929, in a wood-frame house near the Vorort of Düsseldorf, passed away last Tuesday at the age of 78.

The Fifth Column

Chris Schlegel

Starbucks — Feb 15, 2008

My father did consulting for years. Whenever he—or my uncle, also a consultant—began talking about work, I thought about their offices. They were small, poorly-lit rooms with terrible furniture, located in commercial parks off county roads. They were depressing.
My father’s company was named Source Atlantic, and ...

A Nass 100 Introduction

Chris Schlegel, Colin Pfeiffer, Max Maduka

The Nass 100 — Sep 26, 2008

Over a lunch of pizza bagels, a fan of this very paper was asked to explain the Nass 100. "The Nass 100 is this thing that the Nass does every year where they like list one hundred things they never want to see again and like 33.3% of them are super funny." Well, we are pleased to announce a full 67 (round up!) percent of this year's list is top-form humour! Incremental progress, folks.

A Conversation with the Editors

Chris Schlegel, Colin Pfeiffer, Max Maduka

Keeping the Public Safe — Oct 3, 2008

Ca: I think we need to have a talk.

Cb: What about?

Ca: I didn’t actually call you in here to take a shower. I called you in here for something else.

Cb: What’s that?

Ca: I called you in here because I think you have a drinking problem.

An E-mail I Received from Barack Obama, Democratic Nominee for President of America

Chris Schlegel

Keeping the Public Safe — Oct 3, 2008

Dear Chris—

We’ve done it!

Or rather, I’ve done it—successfully completed my first debate with Sen. John McCain, whom I refer to as ‘John’ in order to seem familiar and approachable and non-Muslim.