In one of the more bizarre sports events of recent memory, Grinnell College basketball player Jack Taylor scored an astounding 138 points last Tuesday against Division III opponent Faith Baptist Bible College to bring his team to a 179-104 victory last week and earn him the NCAA single-game scoring record. While most of the media frenzy has been pro Jack-Taylor-shooting-the-lights-out, Sarah Lawrence College American Studies professor Nicolaus Mills has recently spoken out in dissent. What does this have to do with Kenyon? To be honest, very little directly.
Author Archives: John Smith
Alums in (the) Paris (Review)
Peirce Hall in the late 1930s; if you squint you can see Robert Lowell in the distance.
It’s the week before Thanksgiving and the semester has begun to wind down and I’ll venture to guess that you’re getting pretty tired of Netflix and the weather has got you thinking gloomily about better days or as they’re often termed glory days. Despite all the lavish contests we’ve got going these days at The Thrill, I’m afraid I can’t offer you a plane ticket to a tropical island paradise for your usage of caps-lock in the comment section or my undying gratitude for referencing me to an alleged Kenyon-based dating site. However, I can in fact give you some long, distracting, literarily inclined reads from Kenyon alums featured in the famous Paris Review Art of Fiction and Art of Poetry interviews, who almost without fail are asked about their own collegiate glory days. In case you didn’t know, John Crowe Ransom did a lot more than get a building, a lawn and an acapella group named after him. So turn off that “Pyschological Mind Bending Thriller from the 80s,” that a computer-powered algorithm has decided you’d enjoy and slip on those reading glasses.
Do it today: Lords Football vs. Allegheny
I really hope not.
Update: Kenyon defeated Allegheny 20-7 and advanced to 5-3 overall and 4-1 in the NCAC.
There are only two home football games left this year. There are three total games. Currently, the Kenyon Lords are 4-3. If Kenyon College football wins its next three games, it will be the first time the football team has ended a season with seven wins since 1984, when current WashU Bears coach Larry Kindbom in his second season as Kenyon’s head coach led the Lords to all the gridiron glory they could find in and around Gambier. Before Kindbom, the Lords had only achieved seven wins three times—once in 1901 with coach John Eckstorm and twice in 1972 and 1976 with Phil Morse. On average, Kenyon Lords football wins seven games once every 27 years. But hey, at least the rarity of a Kenyon football seven-win season isn’t anywhere close to the Chicago Cubs 104 year World Series victory drought. A word to the wise: the Cubs’ inability to clinch is often capable of providing comfort in times of athletically-related distress.
Do it today: Llama Open Barn
Photo Courtesy of David Hoyt ’14.
Well, word on the streets/back country roads is that there is an open barn today. However, it’s not just your regular open barn of horses and ponies or whatever it is that really happens at an open barn. No, sources say that this is a llama-based open barn. So for all of you parentless Kenyonites still rewatching your Napoleon Dynamite VHS’s and comparing Napoleon’s lonely existence that burgeons into stardom with your own, come on down to the open barn. Even for those of you who have made the respectful decision to erase Napoleon Dynamite from your memory and yet still even for those of you who have family here, the llama open barn makes no judgments. For you family-oriented folks especially, this might be a nice diversion from your little sibling/curious parental figure who keeps opening all of your drawers looking for candy/Tums and instead finds ______!
What: Llama Open Barn
When: Now(1:15) until 5:00 p.m.
Where: McFarland Llama Farm. Take Route 229 through Mount Vernon and keep going until you see the Llamas. (Five miles or so out of town.)
Do it today: Read
Books by Wikipedia.
In case you’ve already forgotten, this extended weekend was for all intents and purposes about reading (and also probably nipping first year homesickness in the bud). On the basis of that, I suggest that maybe reading something might be a nice way to spend at least part of the day. It doesn’t have to be anything substantial — it’s not really Moby Dick weather anyways — just something you enjoy. After all, since you undoubtedly used the last two days to read the pounds of archaic criticism and meandering histories assigned to you for the weekend and most definitely did not throw your backpack into the Kokosing, you probably just have loads of time that you’d enjoy spending reading somewhere.
The Kenyon Thrill 