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In This Issue

• Tom's Restaraunt
• Morningside Heights: Like NYC, But Not
• Letters to the Feditor
• Fed Guide to Internships
• CUicide and You
• Advisors? Who Needs 'Em?
• Housing and Dining Fun Quiz
• Attack of the Killer Barnard Blowjob
• Adventures in the John Jay Elevator
• If You Don't Smoke, We Won't Think You're Cool
• LERNER DELENDA EST
• Piss Off/On Your Roommate
• Fun With Fu!
• Guide to Your Columbia Nervous Breakdown
• THEY WATCH
• Comic - Stickman Theatre's Political Explosion

Kate Sullivan

Lumberjack special, coming up!

Yes, that is the "Seinfeld" diner. No, the inside is different, but the front of Tom's Restaurant is indeed the diner shown in the "boop-dit-a-dee, dip-a-bee-doot" interludes on everyone's favorite sitcom. In the next few days, hundreds of freshmen will blow the totally lame orientation activities and trek out into the City that Never Sleeps, or the two blocks south of Carman. But when a freshman is not yet ready for the edgy hipness and blazing pace of Pinnacle, he needs the reassuring feeling of television spoon fed familiarity only Tom's can provide. See that replica of "The Kramer?" Even in the Big Apple, you've got a trusted friend.

Aside from its ever-dimming pop significance, Tom's is known for its surly service and grease-drenched everything. So after unpacking your bedding and foldable laundry totes, you freshmen should head to a Tom's brunch with your polo shirt & khaki shorts-clad family and delight in finding globs of mint jelly in your orange juice while a waitress calls your mother a tramp in Greek and throws coffee on your infant sibling. Advise your outraged dad not to get too worked up about it; his sausage and pancake platter will render any prolonged period of stress or vigorous movement highly dangerous for the next few weeks.

One time at Tom's I ordered French toast and the waitress, "Battle-Axe Betty" as she's known to students who are me, brought me a thick stack of blueberry pancakes. Oopsy, my mistake! I apologetically repeated my silly actual order, and her goiter throbbed with rage at my insolence. But she finally brought me my French toast just the way I like it, burnt rigid and encrusted with Mediterranean spittle. If you need a bigger breakfast, request the Lumberjack Special: scrambled eggs, pancakes, bacon, sausage, toast, butter, and juice, all glazed and topped with ice cream and cheesecake. The cheesecake has a bacon crust and is itself topped with thumb tacks, a cookie, and battery acid. I always order the lumberjack before flying back home for the holidays because I like a good, hearty meal before travel. I also like to imagine (role-play, if you will), that I'm a secret agent smuggling dangerous weapons on the plane in the form of explosive gas pockets jamming my intestinal tract. Will I crack under the pulsing pressure and take everyone in coach down with me? It's an entertaining way to pass the flight, all thanks to Tom's.

You freshmen, of course, will form your own memories at Tom's. No, none of you will make a group bet on abstinence from masturbation, ever. But will you ever get correct change from the cashier with the awe-inspiring comb-over? How many sloshed-for-the-first-time girls in a booth after midnight will order "just french fries, please" before Battle-Axe Betty just rolls her eyes and walks away? And will the wave of ignorant TV-addled tourists and skittish freshmen customers ever ebb and thereby motivate Tom's to actually make good food instead of putrid glop? Will anyone realize that the urge to go to Tom's is actually a desire to completely avoid all that is new and exciting about New York and Columbia and pathetically settle for something already known from, of all places, a sitcom's segue shot? Have fun and the runs finding out.