Much respe’t for putting me and my homie Peter Fritch (edituh-in-chief, WHAT WHAT) on today’s list of “25 Awesome, under-the-radar Seniors @ Cornell.” And even more respe’t for dubbin’ us the “most ludicrously awesome non-Sun writers and editors.” Word. Y’all ain’t frontin’ when you say y’all “give credit when credit’s due.” Now let me just break it down for you. Let me break it down that I would normally make some joke like “Under the radar, Sun? Boy, you needs to get yo’ radar-measurin’ device ALL UP in the repair shop!” But I was thinkin’ about it and it’s high time to holla back, because, as much as I been a hater, y’all put together a fly-ass newspaper. Here’s three reasons why I love you in a crazy way:

1)  Your Stellar Daily News Coverage: It’s easy (and more fun!) to criticize an article about college kids having dogs. But praising the totally awesome reporting that the Sun puts out, day in, day out? That’s another story. Just today, there’s a riveting, superbly researched feature story about Ithaca’s homeless; as well as another informative, solidly researched feature on Cornell’s upcoming financial woes.

2) Sunnies Spend Their Lives in the Newsroom: Those two stellar articles I mentioned are hardly the least of it: while I’m out crooning Get Low at Rulloff’s Monday Karaoke (true story) or missing an entire week of classes (truer story), the Sunnies are down at 139 W. State St. slaving away. Especially the editorial staff and especially especially managing editor Sarah Singer.

3) I Get Very Cranky Without My Daily Sudoku Fix: Need I say more?

When you guys are hot shit in the big city, holla back atcha boy, will ya?

<3,

Hotnasty-E

P.S. I ain’t got no hyperlink to the list because they ain’t no list on they Web site yet. Blog it like it’s hot, Sun.

And then there’s those brave souls who have said pish posh to Radar’s snarky commentary and transcended petty adversity. Like blue-blooded** Eclipse (the supplementary section of the Sun that has been converted into a pull-out “magazine”) editor Leigha Kemmett, who embraced the magazine’s “unique and engaging content, content that [she] actually wanted to read” despite the fact that the issue she picked up was the one that slighted Cornell.

In any case, I’ll stop this crappy-trend-story-lede nonsense and cut to the chase, sort of: our feelings about Eclipse magazine. It wants to be like Radar, kind of? And the cover story, the unfortunately headlined “Rating the Rankings,” is basically a rumination upon the current status of Cornell’s rankings poo-poo (dropped from 12 to 14 in the U.S. News & World Report, the most overrated item in Radar).

The article is good (I’m quoted at the very end yay!) and most of the other writing is dece, but the layout in general kind of reminds me of a yearbook: the text-wrapped circles, slightly askew headlines, clunky inforgraphics… In fact there are yearbook-y things going on outside of the layout. There’s the cutesy cues to the reader that the people who work on the publication are friends. In real life!  Like the editor, one Ms. Kemmett, totally “invited [pseudonymous advice columnist "A"] to Gramercy Tavern for a drunken lunch date” while they were both working in New York City for the summer. Fabulous?

And there’s also the problem of its being printed on stock that reminds me of advertisement booklets they sometimes slip into the fold of Sunday newspapers. But should they get some advertisers seeing as there’s none yet and move on up to glossy paper, I think overall that Eclipse could blossom into a nice outlet for feature writing at Cornell. So Kitsch (and sorta Slope Magazine and Voices) may not have to be the only venues for longform journalism at Cornell. Competition… scary!

***

*Funny thing, I worked at Radar this summer and it was EXACTLY as Mr. Manfred says. Simian editors feigned intelligence by using the cutting-edge technique of mashing the keyboard randomly to write quality copy, and our receptionist Fred was a pervert trying to pass himself off as… as… a sexually mature receptionist! (Check out this Terabitz search of sex offenders, screengrabbed at left, if you don’t believe me!) Our office was also a bush on the corner of 44th and 2nd, and my fellow interns and I were hired solely on the basis of our past experience stalking celebrities with the pappity-paps.

**Totally irrelevant, but this “New England prepster” has a fan club on Facebook that quotes her as saying, “No I’m not from Alabama, I have all of my teeth, thank you!” I know we, being sensible liberal folk, are supposed to sniff and turn our noses up at these sorts of comments, but I think they’re hilarious. Props for some (hopefully tongue-in-cheek) blue-blooded elitism.