Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Cut the bullshit, I fucking love Springfield

What a pathetic title.

Don't get me wrong, my head is hung in shame as I write this post. It's just, I never feel like Springfield gets any credit, ya know? Everyone always talks about how much they want to kill themselves because of the drab nature of this city. You people are all young. Young and restless. Your expectations exceed the realm of reason. Sorry this town isn't a Vegas for high schoolers. You need something to do? Find people and do them. If you can't find any people in this city then you need to look harder. Because they're there. In the corners reading books and playing video games. Strip those glares of judgment off of your body and be who you want to be. You'll likely find other people doing the same, and you know what? I'd bet those people are pretty cool.

Springfield isn't perfect. In fact, it's flawed to an almost laughable degree. But so's your mom. So are you. You come to accept those flaws and even love them. Like the fact that there is ALWAYS construction being done at super inconvenient stretches of road, or that Steak N' Shake is the ONLY place to eat after 11:00 unless you're wasted (or I guess just foolish) enough to go to Denny's, or EVEN, so long as they're pulling over OTHER people, the Jerome and Leland Grove police. They're a joke. LG has a bike cop who accrues like half of their citations. Our public school system literally may be the worst thing in the world (not that our Private Schools are much better) (specifically SHG) (fuck them, if you hadn't noticed), but hey, we made it out alive. We are a haven for shitbag politicians. We are abandoning the inner-city and sort of rolling over westward. We lack Wendy's, Chik-Fil-A, ample Taco Bell's, White Castle (blessing in disguise, I have no doubt), IHOP, a place for Gondola's, a worthy mall, and worst of all, a population of hot college chicks just walking around at all times (damn you Chambana and Bloomington)!

So? What we do have? We've got horseshoes. We've got Steak N' Shake. We've got two Sonics. We've got the State Fair. We've got Relay for Life. We've got City Tournament. We've got Andre Iguodala. We've got Tara Hills. We've got the intersection of Chatham and Monroe (speed through it, it's a rollercoaster). We've got Sno-Biz. We've got Butler vs. Owen Marsh, a real school rivalry. We've got SHG football. We've got Veterans Parkway. We've got all the bullshit that we won't miss until we think about it one day when we're gone.

To me this city's an old friend of mine. It raised me, eventually I got to know it better, and now we hang out every night. I've walked from Buffalo Wild Wings to the capitol, thus conquering the city and being able to truly claim it as my own. It's literally been years since I've ran into an area of town I had never seen before. In the same respect, this city has seen me start to go places more often that I've previously only drove past or been sparsely. It's watched me change, make new friends, do new things, it knows I have a new job. It knows I like to use my mom's car more than mine ten times over. It knows I enjoy having alone time with it. It finds it very comforting that I stay up with it until it isn't shrouded in darkness anymore. It knows I hate wearing jeans in the summertime. It knows I love wearing shorts in the summertime. (That joke is IN boys! and I'm butting my way inTO it). But seriously, I know this city better than I know most of my friends.

Okay, yeah, that last paragraph was weird. But shamefully true. I'm not saying my love is reasonable, but I'm saying it's there. We have a nice location, a nice population, some nice features (Knights Action Park, fact that we're a capital city, Washington Park), and there is a familiarity now that I (and maybe you feel this too) am reluctant to let go of. Trust me, I will. I am getting OUT of here. But not because this city bores me. There's plenty to do. But being a journalist means I had better find a way to do better than the State Journal Register. Because that shit sucks. Notice my lack of compliments for the newspaper I've been getting since I was born. It's a stupid goal to set because of how it's run by the Griffin mafia (P3!!!) and how much they're going to be dead in four years. Anyway. Yeesh. I'm leaving here, you're leaving here. We're all leaving Springfield. Some with contempt, others like me will leave with love. I, for one, will miss you Springfield.

It's been a pleasure.
It always is.

--Eliot Sill

4 comments:

  1. Let's see you go write a better paper than the sj-r.

    - Nick's Dad

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  2. well, more of my friends read this and find interest in this than in the newspaper. :D HOWEVER, i did not clarify that my intention was not to berate the employees of the SJ-R for producing a bad paper. i realize that the decline of the newspaper industry is due to the rise of the internet and ubiquity of cable television, and that it is not the people at the SJ-R's fault that their budget is being butchered and less people are reading.
    i realize that it was the changing in the media industry that caused people to need the paper less that caused less people to buy it that caused the budget to tank that caused staff to need to be pruned that caused less to be included in the paper that caused the product to sink. my criticism, as an aspiring journalist, was aimed at the job outlook and not the job the SJ-R's employees are doing. reading over this post again though it does not seem that way, but then again, that's why real writers have editors.

    - Eliot

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  3. People who can use it's always a pleasure.

    In order: 1. Conor O'Brien
    2. Nicholas Dietrich

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  4. after seeing how mad both of you get when the other uses it how the shit can i resist?

    ReplyDelete