So this is it ladies and gentlemen, the final column of my illustrious writing career. It all began in third grade when a piece I had written about tiger poaching was published in Florida Keys Magazine. I was paid $15 dollars for said work, and since my story included the phrase "tiger penis," this was the single greatest experience of my young life. I got to write the word penis, it got published, and I got paid for it. That kind of stuff is like crack to an eight-year-old.
Things went very well for a while, but amid spiraling critical reviews and a slew of VH1 Behind-The-Scenes-esque pieces about my life, the pressure became too great. I became reclusive, only finding solace at the bottom of a candy bag. It all began harmlessly enough, a Swedish fish here, a Sour Patch kid there. Before I knew it I was hooked on the Mack-daddy of them all, candy buttons.
At first, one sheet was enough to get me through the day. Before I knew it, I was unraveling yards of those sugary morsels before breakfast, sometimes not even stopping to remove the candy from the paper. My doctor said if I didn't stop I would end up in a papery grave before I hit double digits. It was at that point I hit rock bottom and decided to take an 11-year hiatus from writing and clean up my life.
It was the spring of 2005 when I decided to get back on the horse and resume the career which had haunted me since the early-90s. The first step in re-establishing my once promising career was the choice of column title. My editors suggested "You Ast for it." While I appreciated this clever title, I could not get past the fact that nobody ever asked for this column. A more appropriate title could have been something like, "You didn't Ast for it but you might end up skimming it a little bit since it's only a page away from the crossword puzzle and you know that you can't kill this entire class period with the word jumble and comics alone." This title, however, was slightly longwinded and didn't make the cut. We finally settled on my choice, "Ast-Place Finish." I initially thought of actually having a consistent theme to my column, and awarding an "Ast-Place" award to whoever made the biggest jerk of themselves in the previous two weeks. This idea, however, failed when I realized I would actually have to pay attention to the outside world to make it work.
My first piece ended up being a hard-hitting critique of a Burger King commercial featuring Darius Rucker, a.ka Hootie of Hootie and the Blowfish. As an idiotic, irrelevant and commercial-based work, this column set the stage for the next 2 ½ years of my writing. Over this time I have covered a wide-range of topics spanning television, television commercials, television shows, video games played on televisions and giant pizzas that are as large as a television. I have tried my best to be germane, profound and above all, entirely serious.
I have received criticism from Napoleon Dynamite fans whose caustic words "you suck" still ring in my ears to this day. I have been chastised by Fiji water employees, Iditarod opponents and Backstreet Boys fans.
I have received praise from many; however, all kind words came in the first year and a half of my column, when everybody got my work confused with Eric Cunningham's.
Acquaintance: "Hey man, read your column today. It was totally hilarious. That joke about [insert something I did not write here] was awesome. What? That wasn't you? I'm so sorry. They should definitely put a picture of the writer on top of the column with the person's full name or something like that."
Me: "How did you get into this school?"
Anyway, I'm sure Cunningham was as unhappy about people mistakenly telling him his column sucked and having to correct them as I was receiving praise from people thinking his words were mine. Damn I hated that guy.
False hatred aside, it's been an absolute blast writing this column. It's insane to think I have written 26 columns, most of which were conceived about 15 minutes before deadline. Looking back I don't even remember writing most of this stuff. A lot of it makes me cringe, some of it makes me laugh, but the knowledge that my idiocy is forever preserved for all to view is the best part of it all. Thanks to the six wonderful editors I have had in my time on the job and to everybody who took a few minutes of their time to read my work. I hope it was worth a few chuckles. That's all I was ever going for.
This is Eric's last column. He can be reached at ast@cavalierdaily.com.
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