David Chernicoff
David Chernicoff
Recent Stories
Thoughts from an old man: Yalies should stop with all the bullshit
During the last few weeks, I’ve consistently felt like an old, old man. I’ve spent a lot of time alone and a lot of the rest of my time nitpicking various aspects of my life and/or maligning physical ailments. I’ve gazed at my surroundings with a consistently jaundiced eye, muttering about how predictable everything felt and, with precious few exceptions, being correct in all my predictions. Every so often I grab a cane and wave it at something while screeching derisively about how things
Naked Fashion
If nobody is wearing clothes at these “naked parties,” what sort of “fashion” could possibly exist? Is my editor trying to pull some kind of a prank on me, sending me unclothed (and unarmed! defenseless!) into a roomful of horny, salacious lunatics?
Either I’m crazy or the voices are lying
The three voices in my head have a game they like to play. Well, actually, they have a few games they like to play, but one game is a particular favorite: The game is called “Is The Rest Of The World Crazy, Or Am I?”
Take off the top, take a look inside: It’s my column in a box!
As the hallucinated scene dissolved, I found myself wishing I could revoke, on principle, the donation I’d already made to the Senior Gift: I don’t like getting treated like an idiot — or a mark — especially not by an institution that’s supposed to respect (and increase?) my intelligence.
FDNY hat seeks a new patriotism
I bought a hat during a stop in New York in late 2001 that says “FDNY” on it, the kind they sold in huge quantities near the World Trade Center site. At the time I bought it, the message it carried was obvious: it meant something like “I want to express solidarity with and sympathy for the city of New York, and especially its rescue workers, who had to handle directly the nightmare of 9/11.” And that was all it meant.
This is your brain on shopping period
I didn’t even start using that handy online course-scheduling worksheet thing until the night before shopping period started. I was tipsy enough when I started that I added classes with silly titles — Franco-Belgian Comic Strips, Gay Paris 1900-1940, Dirty and Dangerous Work, and this semester’s Grand Prize winner, Shops and Shopping — as readily as classes that actually interested me. I was so off-handed about the whole thing that I even added the Senior Essay for the wrong department (
Reason for the season: a scenic view
I was minding my own business, watching TV, when there it was. It was horrible: There was this awful music with all these bells jingling … and a fat man in a bizarre outfit laughing with eerie self-satisfaction at nothing in particular. The whole thing lasted about 30 seconds; and then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished. I was traumatized. It was only Nov. 10 and I had already been asked to withstand the vicious onslaught of a 2006 Christmas ad.
O.J. got away with it: Why does he have to hypothesize?
While I was home over Thanksgiving break, I made a huge mistake: I turned on the TV to watch the news.
Will America turn to Communism?
Around election time I become a member of that vaguely subhuman class of people who are addicted to the Internet, fixated as I am by Web sites that compile polling data from around the country and present it in digest form to the white-knuckled reader.
I WANT YOU, Yalie, to Teach for America
A few weeks ago I was sitting at my computer, doing what I do best — clicking the “Get Mail” button every 20 seconds with a totally ignored course packet on my lap — when something unusual happened: I got an e-mail.