Be nice to Harvard (at least be creative)

Is this whole how-much-can-I-hate-Harvard (and-what-can-my-sign-say) issue getting out of hand, or is it one more way for Big Red partisans to be creative in the dead of winter when Ithaca can be a bleak place?

On the other hand, Harvard still sucks ... and after Saturday's game Harvard still runs the world outside hockey just as it did before the game. Other than the part Melody Davidson seems to be running quite nicely in Torino.

Cornell fans might bow to the gods of perceived censorship and just use first letters for any possibly offensive words. Sometimes the viewer reads in more than is actually there. Example: For a sorority skit, my girlfriend sang the Lerner & Lowe song "I Could Have Danced All Night" and bleeped out appropriate passages: "I could have [silent pause] all night / I could have [silence] all night / And still have begged for more / I could have spread my [silence] / And done a thousand things / I'd never done before."

Any sign with B***, C****, F**** (that's not nice), or S*** is going to be read multiple ways, and there must be other letters of the alphabet, too. The ushers will be running around with pocket copies of the Dictionary of American Slang trying to figure out who to toss and what bad word is represented by J***. Which has the downside of suggesting to the townspeople ushers that wise-ass Cornell students are making fun of them. (Townies can be hockey fans, too.)

If there are Harvard fans and if they show up, that takes more guts coming into the clutches of Lynah than 500 Cornellians taking over Bright. Plus the Cantabs have that long lonely ride back to Boston. Especially when one says, "What's that odd smell coming from under the hood ... like a cooking fish?"

If I were a Harvard fan, I'd carry a sign,
"$25.9B [small letters:] life's winning team"
"$3.3B losing team"


In signmaking, Cornell fans might consider sore spots with the Cantabs: their fear that grade inflation makes a Harvard A-grade dubious and a B equates to a D anywhere else. (Use the "Give me an A ... give me another A" cheer.) Then there's the president, Larry Summers, but his troubles with the faculty seem hard to satirize on a single sign. Since the game is on TV, do you want your sign to be seen across the nation? Then clean up your act. The networks are always suckers for signs that use the network acronym, like (this is about as meek as could be) ...
C ornell
S oars
T o
V ictory
(now fix our webcasts, please)

After the game, at least one Cornell fan ought to tell a Harvard fan how much we all appreciate their putting in an appearance and cheering their team on. That would be an act of true sportsmanship. (That could also disorient J. Winthrop III long enough that another Faithful can steal up behind and liberate JW III's Harvard cap.)

For a small investment, one might go out to the parking lot and put Cornell Big Red license plate surrounds on cars with Harvard decals. It's hard to charge someone with vandalism for adding accessories to a car, so long as you don't use two-part epoxy.

A couple hundred of us will be cheering you on from Philadelphia. LGR!

harvard has no fans, bill. the majority of people in section O will be cornellians who bought tix from harvard undergrads.

have fun at CACO

Give me a B...
Give me another B...
Throw in a C...

Welcome to Harvard, Mr. Bush.

Dear NBC,

It's Turin. It's not Torino. It wasn't the Moscova Olympics, it wasn't the ÁèÞíá Olympica, so it isn't Torino.

Also, there are other countries competing than the US. However, do put the Johnson sisters curling team on more, because they are cute.

billhoward
The networks are always suckers for signs that use the network acronym, like (this is about as meek as could be) ...
C ornell
S oars
T o
V ictory
(now fix our webcasts, please)

Don't be that guy...no one likes that guy. Anyone caught with a sign similar to this should be accosted by the entire faithful. Nothing says, "I'm a moron, put me on tv" like making a sign using the letters of the network.

billhoward
Since the game is on TV, do you want your sign to be seen across the nation? Then clean up your act. The networks are always suckers for signs that use the network acronym, like (this is about as meek as could be) ...
C ornell
S oars
T o
V ictory

So you're asking me to leave my

C antabs
S uck.
T hat's
V eritas.

sign at home?

Love it. You absolutely MUST bring that one!

C ornell
S oars
T o
V ictory
(now fix our webcasts, please)

Give me a break! I worked hard to make this one as bad as could possibly be. Like: Nebraska Buffaloes Colorado -- Go Huskers! Think Bulwer-Lytton Ficton Writing Contest [www.bulwer-lytton.com] and below.

Real options:

1) Make it half witty (opposite of above). This is still mediocre ...
Cornell Sticks It To HarVard
... but it gets you on TV and the pun is actually quite advanced for televison.

2) Make it witty and then when you're on camera, flip the sign real quick with something more to the point on the back: A real insult to Harvard or something about the quality of CSTV's webcasts.

In fact, if the back of every sign said "CSTV - Fix the Webcasts" maybe the producer in the control room (um, how sophisticated is CSTV?) would get the message and pass it back. Of course, once a couple people do the flip-the-sign trick during the game, the producer is likely to shy away from crowd shots. So do it before the game. If it embarrasses Andy Noel to action, good.

TV is also a sucker for bare skin. Bring back the C-O-R-N-E-L-L navels. It's a good recruiting tool, too.

Harvard is the game to plead for all red and white wardrobe.

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
--Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

Trotsky

So you're asking me to leave my

C antabs
S uck.
T hat's
V eritas.

sign at home?

Awesome. Maybe you can paste something over Sucks to get you in the door. (Or "Sucks" gets applied afterwards.) Sort of like pasties or a tear-away jersey. But it ain't gonna get you televised.

If you're thinking presidential ...

SHOOTING ACCURACY
Man Up - Matt Moulson
Man Down - Dick Cheney
Go Red! Spray Harvard

Y'know, Bill, there are some decaffeinated brands on the market now that taste just like the real thing.

Beeeej

Beeeej
Y'know, Bill, there are some decaffeinated brands on the market now that taste just like the real thing.

Yes, but I think we need some de-lame-inated brands in this case, as I don't think caffeine is the problem.

Trotsky
It's Turin. It's not Torino. It wasn't the Moscova Olympics, it wasn't the ÁèÞíá Olympica, so it isn't Torino.

Also, there are other countries competing than the US. However, do put the Johnson sisters curling team on more, because they are cute.

That is a great pair of sentiments. Respect our language, NBC ... but stop paying so much attention to our athletes!

FWIW, I agree with the latter sentiment and wish more attention was paid to the low profile sports we aren't as good at.

As to the former, I'm glad a plucky little Italian city told the IOC "We don't speak English here. Call us by our name." I've always thought it was odd that people rename places into their native language.

In other creative chanting news:

[sports.espn.go.com]

"creativeness"?!

Beeeej

One of the benefits of living on the Canadian border. CBC does a far better job of carrying a variety of sports than NBC, and they spend much more time broadcasting the sports instead of athlete profiles. You can also catch many events live on Canadian TV. They actually broadcast a wide variety of international sporting events throughout the year.

ajec1

billhoward
The networks are always suckers for signs that use the network acronym, like (this is about as meek as could be) ...
C ornell
S oars
T o
V ictory
(now fix our webcasts, please)

Don't be that guy...no one likes that guy. Anyone caught with a sign similar to this should be accosted by the entire faithful. Nothing says, "I'm a moron, put me on tv" like making a sign using the letters of the network.

I couldn't have said that better myself.

"Too many A's in Section O" on a sign?

I like it.

It actually is Torino. It's in Italy, respect that and their language. Who cares that NBC is an American network?

Does it have to be "all about US?"

That's not the point. For the US audience, it's Turin, in the same way that every Olympics has been the English equivalent of the site name. If you're broadcasting to a 90% Spanish-speaking audience in west texas, call it whatever Turin is in Spanish.

At the site itself, *of course* it's the native language, and the site officials are perfectly justified in telling the US to go pound sand.

NBC is calling it "Torino" in order to appear more exotic and exciting, not out of geopolitical sensitivity. It's just a dumb marketing gimmick.

Trotsky
NBC is calling it "Torino" in order to appear more exotic and exciting, not out of geopolitical sensitivity. It's just a dumb marketing gimmick.

Not just a marketing gimmick. Unlike in past Olympics, the IOC allowed Turin to use its Italian name it its own branding (evem though it is officially the site is Turin). Past host cities were required by the IOC to use the English name. I don't doubt that NBC jumped on the opportunity to glam up their own marketing but I don't blame Torino for wanting to use their own name.

And Rich, do you have an attitude other than sneering?

ugarte
And Rich, do you have an attitude other than sneering?

To be fair to Rich, that was self-righteous posturing, not sneering.

Someone in the band should hold up a sign putting the word "Sucks" on a musical scale between the repeat symbols, along the lines of:

|| : Sucks : ||

The mathematically inclined could do Sucks squared (is there a way to do superscripts here instead of just Sucks^2?)

And to thwart the censors, "Harvard Harvard"

Oops. Meant to hang this off the top message, not the Turin/Torino discussion. Oh well, Sucks still sucks.

Torino? Turin? We Americans used to call the places whatever we felt like. Sometime in past 50 years, John Wayne checked out and we agreed to call banana republic countries, typically the ones that had oil or took hostages or were far-right or far left-leaning but not completely gone, whatever they wanted to be called ... but we never went back and applied the same courtesy, or suck-up standard, to our old friends and occasional sparring partners Germany, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, etcetera. Nobody's crying out for us to say Lydhveldidh Island instead of Iceland. But Ceylon is now Sri Lanka or the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, which is why UN speeches take so long and are also probably inaccurate. NBC ought to be consistent and either say Turin/Italy or Torino/Italia but not mix and match. They're still in mourning over the loss of Michelle Kwan, so we shouldn't bother them over this trifle.

Here's the CIA's list to what countries want to be called: [www.cia.gov]

Beeeej
Y'know, Bill, there are some decaffeinated brands on the market now that taste just like the real thing.

Beeeej

Bonus points for an excellent reference to Real Genius.

The primary purpose of language is communications, not politics (Derrida and Foucault having long been burned on the trash heap of pseudo-intellectualist history for everyone except career graduate students). Hayastan, Zhongguo, and Choson-minjujuui-inmin-konghwaguk give me no information. Armenia, China, and North Korea do.

Trotsky
The primary purpose of language is communications, not politics (Derrida and Foucault having long been burned on the trash heap of pseudo-intellectualist history for everyone except career graduate students). Hayastan, Zhongguo, and Choson-minjujuui-inmin-konghwaguk give me no information. Armenia, China, and North Korea do.

So then your big objection to Torino is that it is confusing?

ugarte

So then your big objection to Torino is that it is confusing?

My objection to NBC calling its coverage "Torino" is that it's an affectation, like my teenage Anglo daughter trying to build her ethnic street cred by ordering a "burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrito." To erect a facade of authenticity is by definition inauthentic. NBC spends all its coverage cramming the mind-numbingly mawkish trivia of every US athlete's life story into our eyes because nobody could possibly be interested in the performances of non-US athletes. For them to play the multicult card is a joke.

Trotsky

ugarte

So then your big objection to Torino is that it is confusing?

My objection to NBC calling its coverage "Torino" is that it's an affectation, like my teenage Anglo daughter trying to build her ethnic street cred by ordering a "burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrito."

Well, NBC is the network of Bob Cohssss-tahssss. ("There's no way the Brrrrroncos will beat Sandiejo ... een Torino!"

Trotsky
NBC is calling it "Torino" in order to appear more exotic and exciting, not out of geopolitical sensitivity. It's just a dumb marketing gimmick.

Actually, what I find amusing is hearing people say "Torino" with an American accent, including the distinctly non-Italian r.

Trotsky
My objection to NBC calling its coverage "Torino" is that it's an affectation, like my teenage Anglo daughter trying to build her ethnic street cred by ordering a "burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrito."

As Bob Costàs himself once said, "No way the Brrrrrrroncos could beat SanDIEGO EEen SanDEIGO." Right before Hhhhantonio MendOZA asked for another HeeenchEElada!.

Ah, that's hard to type. And jtw beat me to the punch.

How can we be nice when we get e-mails like this?

Fish
Cornell is on notice that if the game vs. Harvard is delayed because of fish on the ice, or because of other distuptive, unsportsmanlike fan behavior, the Big Red will be penalized (and the penalty is a five minute major)! Cornell Police will check everyone at the entrances to Lynah, and fish will be confiscated. Anyone found with a fish will lose his or her tickets to the game. As usual, throwing objects onto the ice is prohibited, and violators will be expelled from the rink.

There's no need for the Athletics Office to be a killjoy...

Um, did they change the rulebook to make delay of game a major? Or are the killjoys just lying out of their asses. Hmmm, what seems more likely?

And, anyway, last time I checked the penalty isn't a five-minute major.

This crap gets spewed every year. People should just bring their fish, throw them at the right time, and have fun. And no need for the stupid stuffed animals this year--it just looks messy.

I've always enjoyed the variety, myself - stuffed fish, inflatable fish, boxes of Mrs. Paul's, bags of Gummi Fish... It shows a good range of senses of humor. What isn't appropriate is a can of sardines/tuna/salmon, or anything else that could actually hurt someone who gets hit by it.

Beeeej

The advantage of the stupid stuffed animals is that they can be given away to needy kids. Of course, that's only desirable if they aren't mixed with fish guts...

Beeeej
I've always enjoyed the variety, myself - stuffed fish, inflatable fish, boxes of Mrs. Paul's, bags of Gummi Fish... It shows a good range of senses of humor. What isn't appropriate is a can of sardines/tuna/salmon, or anything else that could actually hurt someone who gets hit by it.

Also inappropriate are loose fish sticks, because the breading gets stuck on the ice and stays there the whole game.

That said, the rink staff is prepared, if you throw your fish at the right time the game won't be delayed, and even if it is, it's certainly not going to cost the team a major.

KeithK
Um, did they change the rulebook to make delay of game a major? Or are the killjoys just lying out of their asses. Hmmm, what seems more likely?

I'll take lying out of their asses for $800, Alex?

Shit. I agree with RichS. Been nice knowing you. Gonna go drink a bottle of Liquid-Plumr. And so close to the Harvard game...

Trotsky
The advantage of the stupid stuffed animals is that they can be given away to needy kids. Of course, that's only desirable if they aren't mixed with fish guts...

Which is why it's stupid to do this at the Hahvahd game.

yes, it should be done earlier. Holiday season would be a great time, perhaps.

WillEB
How can we be nice when we get e-mails like this?

Fish
Cornell is on notice

I'll alert Stephen Colbert.

And #1 on the Threatdown? Fish at the Harvard game. They'll only attract bears.

Bring your stuffed animal and drop if off at the door that way you avoid the fish guts

They don't say you can't bring both a real and a fake fish to the game

ugarte
Not just a marketing gimmick. Unlike in past Olympics, the IOC allowed Turin to use its Italian name it its own branding (evem though it is officially the site is Turin). Past host cities were required by the IOC to use the English name. I don't doubt that NBC jumped on the opportunity to glam up their own marketing but I don't blame Torino for wanting to use their own name.

Hey, it could all be in French and that would really piss off the people of Torino.

BTW, Olympic hockey is good today.

Edit: Sorry about that.

canuck89
yes, it should be done earlier. Holiday season would be a great time, perhaps.

Last year, Harvard was around Thanksgiving, so at least it made a little sense. This year? A late Valentine's Day Present?

atb9

<edit>something about a hockey game</edit>

From those of us recording the game, thanks for that non-sequitur.

RichH
And #1 on the Threatdown? Fish at the Harvard game. They'll only attract bears.

Clarkson? You're on my list. Harvard?

You're dead to me.

RichH
From those of us recording the game, thanks for that non-sequitur.

Sorry Rich. I editted to a more general statement about the games being great.

atb9

Sorry Rich. I editted to a more general statement about the games being great.

No problem, and thanks! My quote of you has likewise been edited.

Does this no fish policy mean that squid, octopi, sharks, rays and so on would be OK?

If any biology people want to help clarify this important matter that would be great.

RichH

atb9

Sorry Rich. I editted to a more general statement about the games being great.

No problem, and thanks! My quote of you has likewise been edited.

PS, don't read the US Olympians thread...score updates have been posted.

oceanst41
Bring your stuffed animal and drop if off at the door that way you avoid the fish guts

They don't say you can't bring both a real and a fake fish to the game

And if you brought a fake fish, would they then not suspect you of also having a real one?

Finally, a reason to use this smiley:

If I remember correctly from zoology - "fish" means fish and anything evolutionarily above fish including humans, lizards, cows, whatever... whereas "fishes" means just the fishy ones in the water.

But I could have that backwards.

Also. A puppet (stuffed animal) would be a good way to avoid your fish getting caught in the frisking. Stuff the fish in the puppet (inside a plastic bag) and then give the puppet to the kids.

Also unacceptable - fish that have been cut open. A couple years ago someone threw an open fish and the guts went all over. It was gross.

sen '08
A couple years ago someone threw an open fish and the guts went all over. It was gross.

That was intentionally pre-opened? Ew. I always figured it just 'sploded.

cheer suggestion

"wipe your Du" (chanted at a slow let's go red pace)

yea, i'm not terribly creative

imafrshmn
cheer suggestion

"wipe your Du" (chanted at a slow let's go red pace)

yea, i'm not terribly creative

Screw the Du (Mountain Dew-esque)
Du not pass go, Du not collect $200

Du lei lo mo -

Du doesn't sound Chinese so its meaning might be lost on the recipient, but for any Cantonese fans out there, the above is a suggestion for the recipient go do something with his mother.

imafrshmn
cheer suggestion

"wipe your Du" (chanted at a slow let's go red pace)

yea, i'm not terribly creative

It might be the beer talking, or the fact that my sense of humor is sometimes on par with a nine-year-old's, but I love that.

Screw BU, Du too!

Rob NH
Screw BU, Du too!

If one looks for two syllables to maintain the cadence, Gene has the proper number in his surname.

billhoward

Rob NH
Screw BU, Du too!

If one looks for two syllables to maintain the cadence, Gene has the proper number in his surname.

I was suggesting it more as a sign than actually changing the cheer, but "Screw BU! Nighman too!" does have a nice ring to it.

be nice?!?!?!

screw that