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Show Views&Opinion Monday, Aug. 24, 2009 Page 14 Utah State University • Logan, Utah • www.aggietownsquare.com OurView AboutUs Editor in Chief Patrick Oden Hooray for the A News Editor Rachel A. Christensen M any of you are setting foot on campus for the first time, many others are returning to the hallowed halls of Utah State to continue your pursuit of a higher education; in either case, you’ll most likely agree the summer passed too quickly. The weather is still beautiful and optimism abounds, but it won’t be long before sweaters are rescued from their mothballs and our shorts and sandals enter into a seemingly endless hibernation. Class schedules and homework assignments will soon overwhelm daily planners but don’t forget where you are. This is Cache Valley, home to some of the best outdoor activities in the West, if not the country. Hiking, climbing and cycling are but a few of the ways to unwind from the rigorous demands of college and will soon give way to snowboarding, skiing and the assimilation of a snowman army. Get outside and enjoy, you might discover a new passion or rekindle an old love. But whatever you do, don’t miss out on what the greater Logan area has to offer. As we begin the first week of the new semester there will also be plenty going on around campus as will be unavoidably evidenced by the Week of Welcome. You can be covered with foam, watch a movie on the HPER field and shake it ‘80s style at Friday night’s dance. Whatever you find yourself involved in as the 2009-10 academic year gets underway, you can count on the tireless souls that comprise the staff of The Utah Statesman to be hard at work to keep you informed and entertained. As your unparalleled source of campus news, sports and student life we are your paper, and you, you are an Aggie. Have a great year. Common courtesy is it too much to ask? T o paraphrase The Rolling Stones, please allow me to introduce myself. I’m a man of little wealth and questionable taste. Hi! I am Harry, everyone’s favorite middle-aged college student. Oh, many of you may not think of 39 as middleaged. I can state emphatically that it is not the years but the mileage that makes me say otherwise. Why are you reading me right now? Many reasons. Some of you are killing time before class starts. A small amount of you are disturbingly anal retentive and need to read something while eating. And a select few picked up the Statesman knowing I wrote this column and would say something controversial. To be serious for a brief Re-Entry Thoughts moment – and it will be brief – I wanted to pass along a warm hearty hello and to explain what you may expect from this column as the semester spirals downward into a hellish pit of utter helplessness. This is more of a syllabus than an introduction. I don’t call it a syllabus because, and let us all be honest here, no one in college actually reads a syllabus. What you can expect from my column this semester can best be described with words found in a thesaurus or by talking to an English major (better you than me). I will be verbose, haughty, churlish, pithy, profound, profane, sagacious, salacious, high-brow, low-brow, spiritual, fanatical, conservative, liberal, sincere, sinister, sentimental and, most assuredly, I will be magniloquent. During our next few months together, I hope this column will engage every single one of you on a variety of subjects and controversial issues. I will challenge the university, the professors, the football team, the Nazi lifeguards in the HPER, Stew Morrill’s weak scheduling, Logan, Cache Valley, Utah, the United States of America, Albania, television, movies, music, religion, drunkards, smokers, cell phone users, homophobes, xenophobes, environmentalists, Birthers, English majors, Arby’s, people who put ketchup on hot dogs, my editors, and I most definitely will take as many cheap shots at BYU as my disdain for that pompous, overrated school will allow. To wet your palate, allow me to finish this introduction with a small example of what I shall discuss in the months ahead. I am currently typing this column in the computer lab in the TSC. Many people are involved in loud conversations with each other and on their cell phones. This also happens quite frequently in class and the library. To those students who talk in these places, I have a very hard truth to reveal to you: Your parents have been lying to you your entire life; you are not special. People around you in the computer lab who are typing do not want to hear about your weekend. People in your classroom who are facing the front of the room are paying attention to the professor. Those quiet people in the library with textbooks, writing stuff in notebooks, have a big exam Unconvential Wisdom - See WISDOM, page 15 Assistant News Editor Catherine Meidell Features Editor Courtnie Packer Assistant Features Editor Greg Boyles Sports Editor Tim Olsen Assistant Sports Editor Graham Terry Copy Editor Photo Editors Web Editor Clunkers or collectibles beauty is in the eye of the beholder MONTEREY, Calif. – The moment of clarity for me came Sunday, the second night of the Gooding & Co. classic car auction. On the block was a 1971 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, as wretched and routine a hunk of Detroit iron as ever freighted down an assembly line. Spot-welded together with the craftsmanship one might expect of unsupervised political prisoners, the Monte Carlo – with a 402-cubic-inch V8 engine and fourbarrel carburetor – was and is a sidewalkfumigating stink bomb, with no steering or handling to speak of, and brakes that are more rumor than fact. This particular car was a cut above, with fine black Naugahyde and adhesive-backed wood grain on the dash. Still, in my college days I could have bought Monte Carlos like this for $500 all day long. At Gooding, the car sold for $60,500. Good Lord. The clunkers of my youth have become classics. As the government’s “cash for clunkers” program rides into the stimulus sunset, the consensus seems to be that although the rules might have been more expertly crafted, the program was wildly successful, helping to move nearly a half-million vehicles off dealer lots in a few weeks and getting thousands of gas hogs off the road. And as my colleagues Ralph Vartabedian and Ken Bensinger reported, the classic car industry managed to craft the rules so that no car made before 1984 – potential collectibles – would qualify. The nation was thus spared the tragedy of seeing, say, a ‘79 Buick Regal two-door coupe being euthanized. After all, Buick only made 273,375 of them that year. But having sat in on a few classic car auctions in Monterey last weekend during the annual buildup to the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, I was struck by how arbitrary and clumsy the 25-year rule is, and what a moving target the notion of classicism is. Yes, it does seem unlikely that future car collectors will covet a 1989 Geo Metro, a rinky-dink little sardine can that General Motors and Suzuki made by the millions. And it is certainly true that the last quartercentury of car building has been a period of unusual gracelessness. American cars in particular weren’t so much manufactured as excreted, costsqueezed and homogenized and ambered in their own mediocrity. Think about it: Chrysler Town & Country minivan, Mercury Tracer, Ford Mustang 5.0, Pontiac Grand Am – terrible cars made in staggering numbers. How could they ever be collectible, much less classic? Then again, a few years ago, no one would have predicted that the robustly awful 1971 Plymouth Duster would make it to the block at the prestigious Bonhams & Butterfields’ auction in 2009. My father would have howled at the idea that his 1939 Ford DeLuxe station wagon would have ever been collected by anyone who wasn’t in the scrap iron business. Last week, one rolled across RM Auctions’ stage. As a traumatized veteran of several British sports cars, I nearly keeled over at the prices some of these cars were getting (RM sold a 1939 MG TA Tickford Drophead coupe for $132,000 and ‘62 Triumph TR3 for $44,000). So you just never know what will bubble up through car consciousness to be declared desirable and collectible, which cars will bottle a moment and a mood or a technology, which will become important to people. As for the “cash for clunkers” post-1984 rule, I think it’s a pretty blunt instrument that probably resulted in many future collectibles being consigned to the scrap yard. Here’s a list of clunkers that deserve better. All have a trade-in value of less than $4,500, according to Kelly Blue Book, with average mileage and in good condition. – 2001 Pontiac Aztek: The irradiated toad of GM’s crossover program, the Aztek has the same collectible cachet as the Ford Edsel and footage of the Hindenburg in flames: Everybody loves to have a little piece of disaster. Dirtiest secret? The Aztek was actually pretty useful to drive. Totally collectible, if any are left. – 1993 Cadillac STS with Northstar engine: This was the first glimmer of hope that Cadillac could be turned around. The Northstar was GM’s first proper modern, dual-overhead cam engine and the STS’ clean, modern styling was first-rate. If you see one on the road today, you’ll see. Future classic, for sure. – 1994 Mercedes-Benz S320 Sedan: They don’t build them like this anymore. I mean, they really don’t. The W140 chassis S-Class - See CLUNKERS, page 15 Mark Vuong Pete Smith Tyler Larsen Karlie Brand About letters • Letters should be limited to 400 words. • All letters may be shortened, edited or rejected for reasons of good taste, redundancy or volume of similar letters. • Letters must be topic oriented. They may not be directed toward individuals. Any letter directed to a specific individual may be edited or not printed. • No anonymous letters will be published. Writers must sign all letters and include a phone number or email address as well as a student identification number (none of which is published). Letters will not be printed without this verification. • Letters representing groups – or more than one individual – must have a singular representative clearly stated, with all necessary identification information. • Writers must wait 21 days before submitting successive letters – no exceptions. • Letters can be hand delivered or mailed to The Statesman in the TSC, Room 105, or can be e-mailed to statesman@aggiemail. usu.edu, or click on www.aggietownsquare.com for more letter guidelines and a box to submit letters. (Link: About Us.) Online poll With new football coach Gary Anderson taking the helm, The Utah Statesman wants to know, how many games do you think the Aggies will win this season? • Three or less. • Between four and six. • Between seven and nine. • Ten or more. Visit us on the Web at www.aggietownsquare. com to cast your vote. |