Hack Attack

Voices of the Damned. The Really Damned.

Rob! It's about your kids, Rob!! Something's got to be done about your kids!!!

Remember that whole thing about the Commentator owning the Oregon Voice? We still do, and it's time for some tough love. Bend over, you OV hacks, it's time for a whuppin'. Remember, we're doing this because we love you; it hurts us more than it hurts you.

As far back as memory serves, the Oregon Voice has suffered from a bizarre identity crisis. Is it a lame Mad magazine clone, or a bland, poker-faced human interest publication? Its staff is, or rather was, divided down a distinct line. On one side sat Rob Elder and his Kevin Smith-worshiping brethren. On the other, Niki Stojnic and her somber, cautious ilk. These two groups of rejects and their separate agendas have been pitted against one another within the Voice's schizophrenic pages for the last couple of years. But this era of internalized struggle is, however, quickly coming to an end.

The OV has always teetered neurotically on the edge between its half-witted humor side and its uptight conventional side. Through the years the humor side has always come out on the top. Up until a few months ago readers could always rely on the publication for a good groan. With Elder at its helm, the Voice easily upheld its reputation as the University's premiere source of irritatingly cheeky '80s retrospectives and shitty jokes lifted straight from monologues on the "Tonight Show". Stuffed with comic book line drawings and endless Tarantino references, it possessed an aura of cheesy dorkiness. Sure, most of the magazine still centered around its listless features but the lame humor still outshone their murk.

Back in the day, the OV's interviews featured such geek icons as the guy from "MST 3000" and Oliver Stone himself. The tweekish illustrations of Michael Wight covered nearly every single page, adding only further to its nerdy allure. Under the iron rule of Elder, the Voice was a jumbled melange of the boring and the banal. On one page would be an asinine top ten list, on the next a dead serious article about witchcraft. During his reign as publisher, Elder set new standards for severely fouling up a college newspaper.

Throughout his tenure as publisher/dictator of the OV, he spent more time reaping the benefits of the position (i.e. promotional CDs, free concert tickets, etc.) than paying attention to the paper's content. Who can forget last year's revoltingly bad "sex issue," or the drawing of Voice editors depicted as characters from "Reservoir Dogs"? Not anyone who came within 50 feet of it, that's for damn sure.

But after years and years and years and years and years (possibly decades, no one currently attending the university knows for sure), Rob has finally moved on, leaving his comic book junkie progeny to be overwhelmed by the onslaught of Niki's dismal brigade. As of last term's Valentine's Day issue, Stojnic has assumed control of the coveted publisher's slot, and three new associate editors have insinuated themselves into the Voice's upper ranks. Rather than clean up the mess that Elder made of the paper, they've immediately begun making things even worse. It almost almost enough to make one long for the old days.

With the conclusion of "Wrong Turn at Albuquerque," Wight's self indulgent comic ode to insecurity that once filled the last page of every issue, the Voice has officially begun losing its unflinchingly insipid sense of humor. What little balls the publication once flaunted are slowly being torn from its shriveled crotch by the new editorial staff, only to be one day flushed down the urinal of staunch blandness. Gone are such timelessly geeky departments as "Daytrips to Hell" and "Nifti and Neato," only to be replaced by an increasing number of dull feature stories.

The staff of the Oregon Voice, which used to consist mainly of students who spend their free time loitering around Emerald City Comics, seems to have been overtaken by the sort of people that get teary eyed every time Sarah Maclachlan's "Adia" comes on the radio. These are same folks that react sharply anytime someone speaks negatively of "Felicity" or "Dharma and Greg."

The Valentine's issue, the first produced by Niki's current regime, included an article on long distance relationships, a feature on young, married students and an unreadable story about food in cinema, of all things. Each read like essays written for a 100-level philosophy course. The most gut wrenching article of the issue, though, is the one by Steven Sawada titled "Round Table of Love." Once, the Voice appeared to have standards--abysmally low ones--but standards nonetheless. Sawada's article would effectively negate that assumption.

Upon the first reading, the article seems like a sick joke; that maybe Steven had hooked up with a few of his Playstation pals and a rack of Zima and had a little fun. Upon further consideration, however, it becomes evident that this isn't the case. The pictures accompanying the article are a little too guileless. "When you cram six students in a tiny room and bombard them with serious and embarrassing questions, there's no time to think of the right or PC answer..." or anything remotely interesting, for that matter. Congratulations, Steve, you successfully gathered together a room full of your mutant cohorts and exploited the hell out of their dimwitted thoughts on love. For your efforts, you deserve a swift kick in the nuts!

Serving as the sole diamond in the rough in perhaps the Voice's entire collective history, Joy Lanzendorfer's article on meth in the same issue was actually pretty good. It was tightly written, well researched and informative, which makes the reader wonder Joy, WHY THE HELL ARE YOU WASTING YOUR TIME WITH THESE OV HACKS? Escape to the Emerald before it's too late. Your cohorts' lack of talent is probably communicable. A tip of the 'ol hat would have been given to Sawada's useful sidebar on "Drugs by Design" had it not been blatantly copied from an old medical journal. (Steven, if you're reading this, please avoid all future contact with computers, pencils and paper.)

Anyway, what does the future hold for the Voice? One need to look no further than the last issue, which somehow managed to be even more mind-numbingly inept than the one preceding it. This one included articles on such remarkably uninteresting subjects as the life and times of a young student parent, Disney conspiracy theories and the current plight of modern poetry. The standout of that issue (ie, the one that compelled the Voice's reader's to try and claw out their eyeballs the most times) was "Pub Crawl" by Brian Wise. Brain, why the hell are you writing about beer as if it's wine? Beer's beer, even when it's a microbrew. It isn't "pleasant," it never has "definite notes of citrus and wood," and under no circumstances should it ever be described as "playful." If the whole thing was a joke, then well, great, you had us all fooled. If not, get a full-frontal lobotomy, you pretentious, self-absorbed dickwad.

There's an infinite number of problems which currently plague the Oregon Voice. The one that stands out the most, however, is that its editors and staff have no idea what kind of powder keg of potential their "magazine" really is. If they were all able to somehow collectively grow a decent sense of humor and expunge the Voice's serious side, the campus might be blessed with another Onion or even a nifty rag the likes of the National Lampoon. But as long as Niki stays at the top of its pecking order, the Voice is doomed to at least another couple of years of apathetic self-importance.

Brandon Hartley, a sophomore majoring in English, is a staff writer for the Oregon Commentator