Author’s Note: All stylistic choices are intentional. If you see an error, I meant it to be that way so shut up.
My last day as News Editor for The Heights was April 29—happy birthday Mom! I’m sure you all noticed, how could you not? Since the moment I resigned my position with Le Heets, the light in the eyes of the eagle frozen in tar (or however the f—k that that happened) in front of Gasson Hall has gone out.
Here’s the thing that’ll shock you: Although I come across as a balanced, brilliant, scorching hot man destined for a shitty position that entails constantly being in trouble or screwing something up in the eyes of at least four people on this campus on a second-by-second basis that, for some reason, is titled “news editor” even though it’s basically a position you hold because you’re willing to have conversations with people, this was never supposed to happen.
I didn’t even want to come to Boston College—didn’t apply, transferred from Villanova. I came to my senses a year-and-a-half later. The first time I tried to join The Heights I typed my email incorrectly into the sports section listserv. Six months later, I got my email right, but was still far from writing a news article—I’m not even sure I’d read one. I ran for four positions on the editorial board: layout editor (I said that I was qualified and then read quotes about how people are creepy from indie filmmakers), graphics editor (I said I was not qualified and then said my favorite graphic was one of a boat that, though multiple editors have looked for it since, cannot be established as a real thing), one of the assistant sports editors (I read a poem that I wrote that was also bad and admitted that I like not only NASCAR, but playing NASCAR video games from the early-2000s), and one of the copy editors.
You’re not going to believe this, but I lost every election but the copy one, where I basically just sat there silently looking into the sky, wishing my lord (Boy George’s hats) would rapture my ass before I made more of a fool of myself.
Finally, I took my first news article in February 2018, putting myself firmly on the path of becoming News Editor, except for the fact that I could not say enough times or to enough people that I would never, under any circumstances, take the news editor job. It was too hard, too sucky, too rewarding.
I think I got made News Editor in August 2018. Always good to be reminded that I’m an idiot.
I think this is article 164, including double bylines and one article I wrote that made the physical paper and didn’t get posted online. There are a lot of others that were written and never published for one reason or another.
I’ve been accused of being a great many things by many a person in the last year at the helm of The Heights’ most evil section—some good, some bad, it was a blur and it’s hard for me to remember if I did the right thing or not anymore.
I think some television shows I used to watch said the line between love and hate is a thin one, and I toed the living crap out of that line over the last year-and-a-half while I called the newsroom my home. I can’t say I’m going to miss being full-time with the paper—everything ends eventually, even Mel Gibson’s career will be over one day, probably thousands of years from now. I’m not sure how much of a difference I made (more people read us now than when I started though, so thank you for that), and at the moment I feel completely aimless and untethered without the organization that has been unquestionably my number one priority for so long.
But that’ll pass. Almost everything I did is completely replaceable, and you, dear readers, will still find a paper being used as a napkin in Mac next semester or whatever it is you heathens do with physical newspapers in the 2010s whether or not my name is on the front page.
A lot is going to change at this place over the next 10 years. I may be rich and famous, I may be homeless, I don’t know or really care right now because I’m “young” and “carefree” and a “comm major” with “few” “career prospects” and “low testosterone” according to “television advertisements.”
But here is what will never change: My aptitude for putting weird things on the internet that nobody else cares about. Here is this article’s edition: Nicolas Kim Coppola, born January 7, 1964 and better known as “Nic Cage,” is cited on his Wikipedia page as having “realized that he had developed his own method of acting, which he described as ‘Nouveau Shamanic.’”
What does that mean? I don’t know. Let’s keep going.
“Cage later explained that he drew inspiration for the name from the book The Way of the Actor by Brian Bates, in which he read about the parallel between the ancient shamans and thespians,” the Wikipedia page says.
The Wikipedia page, which I really want to emphasize is a Wikipedia page, goes on to note that Cage also “defined his acting style using terms such as ‘German expressionist’ or ‘Western kabuki.’”
Reading this page brings me the same joy grass and social justice brings the six BC students who run the meme page on Mark Zuckerberg’s new app the facebook.
The Wikipedia page goes on to note that Ethan Hawke, apparently unironically, said that Nic Cage is “the only actor since Marlon Brando that’s actually done anything new with the art.”
The Wikipedia page says that Sean Penn told The New York Times in 1999, a year that is denoted on its Wikipedia page as “the International Year of Older Persons,” that Cage has transformed from being an actor to a performer.
Penn also, according to Cage’s Wikipedia page that I would steal National Treasure: Book of Secrets style if it was in physical form, said that Cage’s performance in the film Adaptation—which has a 91 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes if you thought Sean Penn had bad taste—was the best acting performance Penn had ever seen.
David Lynch, a filmmaker and person who hates Philadelphia, said that Cage is “the jazz musician of American acting,” according to Nic Cage’s Wikipedia Page.
That makes a lot of sense to me and I’m not lying to you right now for sure.
But here’s the most important part of this page: Nic Cage has a son named Weston Coppola Cage who is a little less than six years older than I am. Here is how Weston is described on Nic Cage’s Wikipedia Page.
“Weston was the lead singer of the black metal band Eyes of Noctum, which broke up in 2012,” the Wikipedia Page says. “Arsh Anubis, his new band of the same genre, was formed in 2011. Weston also appeared in his father’s film Lord of War as Vladimir, a young Ukranian mechanic who quickly disarms a Mil Mi-24 helicopter.”
I hope all you English majors out there know that this f—king Wikipedia PAGE is what true motherf—king literature is. There is nothing more pure of heart, more sound of mind, or strong in body than this f—king paragraph of an extraordinary American actor’s Wikipedia page. This dude got married in Vegas to a lady and filed for annulment four days later as a 55-year-old millionaire Oscar-winner. This is what masculinity truly is.
By the way, it isn’t over.
“During his visit to University of California, Santa Cruz, he stated that he is not a politically active actor and that he can do it in his work as he learned ‘more about nuclear power from the movie The China Syndrome,’” Cage’s Wikipedia Page inexplicably says.
The China Syndrome has an 84 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and does not star Nic Cage, so it probably isn’t worth it.
The Heights totally is. Read it, donate to it, share it. All the people who run it have ever wanted is to show you how many words it can write on lacrosse, and that’s journalism if I’ve ever seen it. On an unrelated note, I can’t read.
If I wrote about you, thanks for letting me. If you read any of this garbage, thank you for doing that even though you’ve obviously made a huge mistake. If I messed something up, I’m sorry—hopefully I did something else to make it up to you.
This won’t be the last time I write for The Heights, but if you’ve made it this far into this article it’s probably the last time you’ll read me because you must be extremely tired of me by now (three this’s in one sentence!). My goal is to write 10-20 more times over the next year, who knows in what form or where or why.
Sometimes I wonder what the last byline will be—probably something about the union if there’s a snarky god laughing at me like I assume there is given how many times I wrote about them.
Or maybe it’ll be an arts article or something I don’t know.
Congratulations, you played yourself for over 1,500 words. It was worth it for me, even if it wasn’t for you. I promise this won’t be the last time you see my byline—in the immortal words of Dirty Mike and the Boys, IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.
Featured Image Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Jack Goldman / Heights…Something, But Definitely Not The News Editor
