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Background: Easily the most popular cartoon of the semester.

Sometime that weekend, all of these flyers showed up around campus. They simply said: "For a better Duke, CAN NAN". The idea popped into my mind, and I went scouting through the recycling bin to find a good pic of Nan. (It literally came from the front page of a copy of the Chronicle.)

I knew I was onto something when I showed the finished product to my roommate. He mentioned that it was hilarious and that he loved the idea of the President's face on a beer can. (His responses were usually pretty blase, to the point that I didn't always show them to him.) But the part that really sold it was that I heard him chuckle intermittently for the next hour or more.

The day it ran was awesome. People I barely knew kept coming up to me and telling me how much they loved it. There's nothing better than: "You know, your cartoon's aren't always funny, but this one is hilarious!"

In the same issue of the Chronicle that featured this cartoon, the Monday columnist wrote a seemingly positive statement about me. But granted that I'd just dealt with a negative opinion in the Chronicle, I initially couldn't tell if they were serious or not. (And I wondered if it referenced this cartoon or not, granted that I'd turned it in the afternoon before. But, admittedly, Sunday night was usually pretty busy at the Chronicle.)

It turned out that my neighbor Bob actually knew the guy who put up the flyers in the first place, and he said it was just a frat prank. He didn't even really care about the President.

I cannot tell you how amazing April 24th was for me. It started with this. That afternoon, I declared my major(s). Then, I went to Chapel Hill, where I met Mike Watt at a record store. That night, I saw the Foo Fighters on their first tour, opening for a Mike Watt band that featured Dave Grohl on drums, Pat Smear on guitar, and Eddie Vedder on vocals and guitar. After the show, I got to meet Dave Grohl. This day was nothing short of positively unbelievable.