I keep thinking about Pee-Wee Baseball. How boring it was in the outfield, waiting for something to happen while the pitcher got all the glory. There are spots in that grass that will never grow back; I spent too much time pulling up blades for anything to come out of that Earth. Nature knows not to try there. Often I’d look forward to a rain shower; stopper of all boring baseball activities, doorway into an afternoon of playing videogames. Thank you, Native American Rain God.

Rain like cold showers, snapping you awake. The worst and best thing for you on a groggy morning. In those minutes, as the water hits your skin like a thousand tiny knives, there’s nothing else you can think about. The one time I didn’t mind cold water was when Tiffany- I mean, Deb- and I got caught outside without an umbrella when I was trying to be “spontaneous” for her. When she leaned in at that random traffic crossing…Tiffany. No. Not what I need.

Um, what else? That dead carcass I saw in my backyard when I was a kid. I don’t know why a fox would die that far away from the treeline. Maybe he knew it was coming and wanted to be near the warmth of our house. Tiffany. Maybe he was just moving across Illinois and our mowed yard was an inconsequential part of his path. I couldn’t stop staring at it. Just hundreds of maggots crawling around inside of what looked like a fox fast asleep. After dad poured gasoline on it to kill them, I swore my coffin would be sealed and made of iron. That won’t happen to me, no sir. Fuck you, maggots.

Ok, this isn’t helping anymore. Maybe think about Mandy. That was sex. Tiffany. No. It wasn’t. It was me lying down and a girl I’m not attracted to just grinding all over me. Nothing about that was hot. Tiffany. She seemed to enjoy it. Good for her.

God damn it. Think faster. Father Levi’s boring lectures. All In The Family the TV series. Tiffany. No wait. No. Tiffany. Jesus. Stop. Wait, slow down, Tiffany. Stop. Tiffany. Let me readjust. Tiffany.

Sorry.

If you give me a few, I can probably try again.

Shit.

Chad Quandt

Made for Campus Movie Fest at Indiana University. I wrote, directed and acted in this one. Really happy with how it turned out. The short was nominated for Best Comedy and is currently in the running for the Audience Choice Award. Enjoy.

I’ve been a fan of Smith’s work since I was a youngling. I was also a fat kid (now I’m more of a stocky one).

Despite my past allegiances, I cannot side with the heavy folks in this regard.
Smith’s tale starts off sympathetically, but he continues to paint himself as a martyr, making claims like, “this isn’t about me anymore.”

If this were true, he wouldn’t have demanded Southwest admit he wasn’t fat. Smith mentions how horribly emasculating it is to be picked on by so-called “sizists.”
I’m going to give Southwest the benefit of the doubt; this was not a case of a fat-hating flight attendant but of workers trying to handle a very rocky situation in which they cannot win.

There have to be some criteria for an airline to say “We think you need two seats.” I can tell you now that people will not agree to any kind of physical compliance test like they do with carry-on luggage.

If it’s too humiliating to be asked to purchase another ticket because of size, people will not want attendants measuring girth with a tape measure.

Whether or not Smith could put the armrests down is not the end-all criteria. Because they have to use a per-case judgement, every worker for Southwest is going to make a different call.

Sure airline seats are small, and airline companies are going to try and fit as many people as they can. But that’s the company’s call to make.

I feel weird taking this stance. A few heavier years ago, I might have sided with Smith and demanded the airlines cater to my size. It is incredibly painful to be overweight in a society that clearly makes being thin a priority.

But every shameful day I’ve spent at the beach with my shirt on has been accompanied with the self-realization that it was because of my own choices.

Southwest doesn’t need to change its seat size; we as a country need to change our lifestyle choices.

If you can live a heavy lifestyle and be happy, more power to you. Just realize that your decisions affect others.

Originally published in the Indiana Daily Student on February 21, 2010.

There are many tragic things in this world: birds who can’t fly, kids who want to play in the NBA but will never break 6 feet, Lindsay Lohan, and the career of a child star. But more tragic than any of these is “The Friend Zone.” It is not a chain of entertainment facilities.
Some of you might not have problems with this phenomenon. If so, you’re probably not a real person. What really seems to get people with it is how much it defies their logic. Every person who’s carried a torch for their best friend does so because it makes perfect sense in their mind. Technically a good relationship is an excellent friendship plus sex. I’m no Kinsey, but that’s the sole existence of The Friend Zone: a close relationship with a lack of mutual physical attraction between the two parties.

The thing you’re most likely to hear as you enter The Zone is, “I don’t want to ruin our friendship.” This is a genuinely bad excuse. It might be hard for people to step into unfamiliar territory, but I’ve yet to hear one of my friends ever say they regretted saying this familiar phrase. We can all agree that life is not like the love stories we see in cinema. Usually Harry meets Sally, and that’s as far as it goes.

Rejection hurts. This is normal. What kills the friended, and not the friendee, is that the torch-bearer has been emotionally invested in a potential relationship for a long period of time. If you’re withholding your feelings, every casual hangout is like the Hoover Dam, a continual force of emotions held back by fear and social stigmas.

I probably sound extremely bitter. It’s just emotional battle scars on the subject. Starting in high school, I became the Duckie to a Molly Ringwald for seven years. Those years included two half-assed, “Say Anything”-style declarations of feelings. It’s hell. You can’t change how you feel unless you’re willing to subject yourself to mental reconditioning like “A Clockwork Orange.”

But I can say this: It is an amazing relief to get your feelings out there. Even with rejection, having the weight removed from your soul is infinitely better than shouldering that angst until you die.

On Valentine’s Day, I encourage you to commit social suicide. Even if you know you don’t have a chance, tell that person what’s going on inside your head. Not because you might get lucky, but because you’ll sleep amazingly that night. Eating an entire carton of ice cream while crying will do that.

Our own country, like so many others, was built on slavery and the raping of a native people. But your recent actions are too much. Overcompensating by enforcing Victorian-era values is the wrong direction. What’s at stake is the most precious thing of all: women’s breasts.

The story was first released by the Australian Sex Party (an actual political party), which alone is awesome for existing. In an attempt to discourage child pornography, A-cup sized breasts are to be banned from films and magazines.

All I can imagine is a manipulative Australian senator with a penchant for well-endowed women wringing his hands maniacally as all goes according to plan.

I should mention they also planned to ban depictions of female ejaculation. But we all know that’s a myth, just like the female orgasm. Yes, I am doing sex jokes from the 1980s.

It’s hard to champion pornography. It’s not exactly the most kosher topic in our culture. But if girls are insecure enough about their body image, it’s only going to be worse if their government views them as children because of their breast size. Besides, there are many girls who are granted with ample breasts at an early age. It’s why I like sitting at my mall’s food court.

Legislators down under have been covering the country with a modern Iron Curtain, and it has just taken the endangerment of perfectly petite mammary glands for us to notice.

Australian Internet service providers are now forced to ban foreign sites listed as “dodgy” by the government. In the list was the Web site of a dentist in Queensland. Given that the Bush administration used vague adjectives to make a terrorist watch list of 500,000 people, there’s clearly potential for things to get out of hand.

South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson also came under fire for an amendment that would require anyone wishing to post an online comment about the upcoming state election to register their real name and postcode.

As there is no rating for video games meant for people 18 and older in the country, popular titles such as Grand Theft Auto 4, Left 4 Dead 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are being edited for content.

Granted, some of these instances of censorship are minor (the modified Fallout 3 version simply referred to morphine with a fake name), but to pick and choose which material is inappropriate without giving citizens the appropriate ways to access it removes the free choice that makes a free nation what it is.

I’m not asking Australia to become a wild and crazed society; that was the film “Mad Max.” If it fails to lower its restrictions, I will be investing in plastic surgeons across Australia.

Originally published in the Indiana Daily Student on February 7, 2010.

Conan O’Brien stepped down as host of The Tonight Show on Friday, forever cementing Jay Leno in our generation’s minds as “Evil Chin Man.” Leno cannot stay in his reclaimed spot forever. Eventually his audience will die.

The late-night wars have produced some great television, and you can count me as one of the Conan loyalists. For all the support the Pale Man has received, I have to ask how many of those who cried foul have actually watched the program regularly in its seven-month span.

I planned to write today about how you (and I) had failed Coco by declaring our love for the man without watching the show. As my pimp hand came crashing down, ready to lay some knowledge on you, I caught it at the last minute. I realized that despite our sins, it was not entirely our fault. The standards by which both Conan’s and Leno’s shows were seen as failing – the Nielsen ratings – are flawed in themselves.

Nielsen creates a sample audience of a few thousand households which are monitored to determine what shows are being watched. It is these figures that networks use to justify ad sales.

I cannot imagine what it must be like to be part of that representative sample, to have one’s viewing habits worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If you or anyone you know is part of this elite group, please contact me at the Indiana Daily Student. I would love to chat with you about why Hannah Montana does so well.

The system is an outdated form of measurement. In the age of telephones it was completely impractical for a network to take a census of every viewer in the country. Nielsen ratings are akin to the electoral college system, a way to funnel the thoughts of millions into a few representatives.

For on-demand viewers, those who watch prime-time shows at 3 a.m., every single habit is easily traceable. There’s no need to depend on the trends of a few thousand to speak for us. Probability says that there have to have been a few flukes, a few misrepresentations of a show’s popularity. Who knows what might still be around?

I’ve spoken enough times about the errors of entertainment executives that I likely won’t find a job with them after graduation. But to whoever weasels their way into a position like NBC’s executive Jeff Zucker, abandon this tradition. Find other ways to prove a program’s popularity. You might be surprised to find what show is actually talked about at the water cooler the next day.

Originaly published in the Indiana Daily Student on January 24, 2010.

As recent events have developed in online affairs, it might be the best thing for us to jump ship as soon as possible. Personal information has always been a mixed bag with Facebook: some reduce their profiles to nothing more than a picture and an e-mail address, while others use status updates to openly talk about their babies’ daddies.No one forces us to risk our privacy by using Facebook. However, Zuckerberg’s recent remarks combined with the changes Facebook has made to his networking juggernaut means I must once again tell you that technology is evil and will eventually turn humanity into meat-sack slaves for the machine overlords.

Facebook’s overhaul this winter hampered users’ control with privacy controls and set the new defaults to a level best described as “Bending Over Naked In A Public Street.” Zuckerberg has attributed the about-face to an attempt to meet the changing social norms.

This idea is best reserved for a start-up Web site. Zuckerberg’s logic is like that of a dictator stating, “Well, we reduced our citizens’ food rations down and a few have stopped eating or tried to start a revolution, but the majority seems to accept this is the new norm. It must be right.”

If you dislike an organization’s new practices, you can always leave. I quit working with a telecom club when it became less about reviewing video games and more about advertising Mountain Dew with “gamer girls.”

But Facebook functions by archiving every piece of data a user has created. This is like a company deciding they need to save all the trash you throw away in case the company needs to consult it years later after you’ve quit. If Facebook intends to go full profit, it needs to honor the Terms of Service we initially agreed to years ago. Let us wipe our data clean from its servers.

As its current system works, we are unable to truly leave the site even if we cancel our accounts. I just want to be able to get out when we can start customizing our profiles with Nickelback songs.

Originally published in the Indiana Daily Student on January 13, 2010.