Since I slacked on posting last week, I have a two-fer this week. And thankfully, for my convenience, they’re part of the same document.
The reason why is that they’re both columns I wrote as audition pieces for the editorial page of the DTH. Every semester, there would be writers, typically from the general student population and not from the DTH staff, who helmed a column one day each week. Most of them were your typical college writers, trying to push boundaries with lots of talk about sex and such. And at points, I thought about giving it a shot myself, just because. As a Californian going to school in North Carolina, I was a bit of an oddity there…or so my friends made it seem. So I thought I might have some interesting thoughts to share.
And here’s where I started.
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Before I begin, there’s something I must let you all know.
I am in love with the pets.com sock puppet.
No, not that one. This post requires explanation up front.
I’d always known that at least on a relative scale, my family was doing all right. My parents came from different economic backgrounds—my mother was the only daughter of a wealthy small-town doctor while my dad was one of five kids in a working-class neighborhood—but both were college graduates who worked hard to create the suburban enclave where my brother and I grew up. Those varied backgrounds sometimes clashed when it came to relatively small matters like after-school jobs, but we were never overly indulged. In contrast to some of my peers, I got a hand-me-down minivan when I turned 16 instead of a souped-up sports car, and my parents only grudgingly allowed me my own phone in my teenage years while friends of mine had their own home entertainment centers.
There may not be a more perfect pastry on God’s green earth than red velvet cake. With its rich body accompanied by tangy cream cheese frosting—not to mention the larger-than-life color—red velvet manages to appeal to pretty much everyone. You need no further proof of that than bakeries specializing in gourmet cupcakes cropping up across Los Angeles and New York City, where red velvet has joined vanilla and chocolate among the classics. Reworking the decadent old-South recipe into a form that reminds busy big-city residents of their long-forgotten childhoods seems to have struck a nerve—or at least a taste bud. I’ve seen the resurgence attributed to the 1988 film Steel Magnolias, with its famous armadillo-shaped red velvet groom’s cake, or the 2002 nuptials of Nick Lachey to Jessica Simpson in her native Texas. While both have long since faded into the cultural landscape, perhaps it’s appropriate that the surging interest in a longtime Southern tradition counts the two largest cities in the U.S. as ground zero.
