If I May: 5 More Things I Like and/or Don't Like

Jake May ’19 -

It was recently brought to my attention that I have not yet written a “listicle” this semester, a fact which I was horrified to learn. I will never turn my back on the listicle! Without further ado, I present to you: “5 More Things I like and/or Don’t Like.”

  1. Beto O’Rourke on Counters Last week, Beto O’Rourke announced his candidacy for president, which has brought him back into the media spotlight. This new media coverage has revealed O’Rourke’s obsession with getting on top of counters in restaurants to address the patrons. If you take a look at some of the photos of O’Rourke’s countertop monologues, you’ll notice a few things. One: often these places are not very crowded. Although most of the tables are usually filled, there is certainly no frenzied crowd visible. Two: Beto looks incredibly tall when he stands atop a counter due to his height of six feet and four inches. Just to compare, the average American person’s height is about five feet and six inches. These two factors lead us to an obvious conclusion: there is absolutely no reason for O’Rourke to stand up on these counters. He could simply stand in an open area of any establishment and would be easily seen and heard. But no, our “man of the people.” He has to stand on a countertop — where people are eating, mind you — so he can show that he’s “born to be in it”.

  2. Xfinity Cable Service Recently, I found out that some Amherst students are unaware of our Xfinity cable situation. Through Xfinity On Campus, all students can use their Amherst email and password to gain access to live cable, as well as a great deal of streaming options. To do this, just go to xfinityoncampus.com and sign in with your Amherst information. I was not paid by Xfinity or by Amherst to write this. It’s just something I like.

  3. A.P. Bio on NBC A.P. Bio is a television show on NBC that recently began its second season. The show stars Glenn Howerton as a disgraced Harvard philosophy professor who winds up teaching — you guessed it — Advanced Placement (AP) biology at his hometown high school. Howerton is certainly quite good in his role, but it’s the supporting cast that makes this show so wonderful. Patton Oswalt and Paula Pell, who play the principal and his assistant respectively, bring two incomparable comedic voices to the show. Perhaps most impressive, though, are the actors playing the kids in the class. The show found some incredible young performers who inject the students with the perfect mix of absurdity and humanity.

  4. Fantasy Sports After my first year at Amherst, I decided to stop playing fantasy sports, an activity I had participated in since I was around 13 years old. I’m not sure exactly what drove me to quit, but it likely had to do with the level of focus fantasy sports required. While it is not a difficult endeavor, most fantasy leagues require tending to your team at least once or twice a week. However, this past fall I decided that I would make a return to fantasy sports as I felt my engagement with sports was changing. I was deeply invested in the teams of which I was a fan (as you’ll see soon), but I was not attuned to the larger narratives of the professional leagues. I didn’t like turning on baseball games and not knowing most of the players. I didn’t like catching the end of an NBA game and having no allegiances at all. Fantasy solves these problems; to succeed, one must be familiar with most, if not all, of the players. Because the players on one’s fantasy team come from a litany of real teams, one almost always has something (or someone) to root for. (If this catches your eye and you’d like to join a fantasy baseball league, please email me and I can set something up!)

  5. The New York Knicks I would be hard-pressed to get through a like/don’t like list without mentioning the New York Knicks. The Knicks are my favorite professional sports team, but I also deeply despise them. In their past 41 games, the Knicks have had an abysmal record of 5-36, making them the worst team in the NBA. The worst team in the league has the best odds of getting the first pick in the draft. However, in classic Knicks fashion, the team managed to be the odds-on favorite to get the first pick in the year that the NBA adjusted those very odds. Instead of having a 25 percent chance of getting the number-one pick, as it had been since 2005, this year the team with the worst record only has a 14 percent chance of getting the pick. So thanks a lot, Knicks. You can’t even lose correctly.