The official student newspaper of Walter Johnson High School

The Pitch

The official student newspaper of Walter Johnson High School

The Pitch

The official student newspaper of Walter Johnson High School

The Pitch

Becoming a Culture Snob

On to another summer — another three months spent lounging about aimlessly and successfully complacent. That’s how I intend to enjoy the remainder of my days before I am packaged along with my belongings and shipped toward my collegiate future.

And before I do so, I intend to spend every waking minute in my own private cultural baptism. Summer, I so dutifully affirm, is a time for good music, good film and good literature. And, if I am to be ready for college, I must refine my tastes and explore new works with reckless abandon. Because who wants to be the awkward guy who doesn’t know who ‘Old Ben’ is in William Faulkner’s “The Bear” during one of the many impromptu, intellectual discussions I will so often encounter in the hallowed halls of my grimy dorm? Certainly not me. I recognize this summer as a period for creative self-realization rather than solely a transitory experience between the misery of high school and the excitement of college.


The first sign of my artistic maturation? I have developed a reading list. Indeed, a summer reading list. After all, for when I enter college, I must be prepared to extol the virtues of all obscure literary phenoms. From this ambitious drive, I have produced quite the impressive list. Starting off with Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, I intend to move through much of contemporary literature, from Tennessee Williams to Gertrude Stein to, perhaps, even Ernest Hemingway.

Yes, I acknowledge the measured pretension in my plans, but how do you expect me to stay afloat amongst so many collegiate intellectuals if I’m not prepared? I’m studying to study in college. Oh, the irony.

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And goodness, college does not merely demand basic understanding of modern literature but also profound knowledge of independent and classic music and film. At least, for me, the ideal college experience requires such cultural acumen. Over the summer, I am prepared to take on an assortment of seminal albums from various indie bands with ambiguous, hipster names that have since tragically disbanded much to the disappointment of their ardent fans, after producing works worshipped universally by pretentious music critics, on the brink of fame. I’ve already made my way through My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless,” the majority of Joy Division’s body of work, and Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” and “On Avery Island.” Now I’ve got a couple albums by The Microphones, The Velvet Underground, Pixies and dozens of other musical outfits to cover. Oh, a summer full of Phil Elvrum — I can’t wait to start.

As for film, it’ll be three long months of Kurosawa, Antonioni and Bergman for me. By the time I’m finished, I should be able to say, with smug, pompous confidence (as all college intellectuals possess), “I did enjoy the tense vagueness of Blowup, I found it much like the symbolic disorder of Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., but, honestly, what the hell was with Zabriskie Point? — it ruined it for me, absolutely ruined it.” And, once again, I couldn’t be happier.

So here I am, prepared to embark on possibly the most important portion of my life — that which determines what I intend to do with the remainder of my life. If I’m going to do this right, I want to be prepared. The hardest step in making this transition is establishing an identity at my chosen institution. What better way to do so than engage in the same cultural discourse I enjoy so very much? And I tell you this now with grim determination, I will be prepared.

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