Three Issues: Anti-Todd Olson E-Mail Rocks My Parents' Inbox

Thursday, December 18, 2008

1. My dad mentioned today that an impassioned e-mail from a Georgetown parent showed up on their ancient (dating to 1993) AOL account, which, I kid you not, is STUEF4FUN. Yep. Anyway, the Voice blog had a right-up and the text of the e-mail, but they didn't seem to know whether this was from Ivan Batishchev, a student, or his parent. Or maybe it was from someone pretending to Ivan Batischev, because apparently the author spelled his name incorrectly, according to the Georgetown directory and The Hoya, for whom the guy has been an alternatingly incomphenisble and dull cartoonist and, I think, some sort of editor. However, on his two Facebook accounts, the guy does spell it "Ivan Batishchev," with an extra "s" in there.

All of this is to say that I was playing on a wet Healy Lawn with a stolen box of frisbees from McDonough Arena at 4 am one night my freshman year during finals and I met a guy hanging around Lauinger who said his name was Ivan Batishchev. And he also said that he had just drank an entire bottle of NyQuil.

All of this is to say that I may have just drank an entire bottle of NyQuil myself that night and Ivan Batishchev is a figment of my imagination. And then I drank an entire bottle of NyQuil a couple years later and reprised the character in an angry e-mail to parents. And created one or two Facebook accounts for the character.

So we really don't know anything about the authorship here. But I'm going to guess it's either me or J.T. DeGioia.


2. I didn't know about these Todd Olson newsletters until I was searching around for photos of Todd Olson to use in the last issue, but they're pretty much exactly as you'd expect. For example, the person fulfilling work sanction hours by writing this Fall 2008 newsletter made the first paragraph almost exactly the same as the one from last year. The main difference is that performing arts had a "busy round" this year rather than the "inspiring round" they had last year. Also, "It is a time of summing up, and preparing for the joyful holidays ahead" now, not "It is a time of great energy and possibilities."

The most important thing, however, is that they used the same picture as last year. And in this picture it appears that Todd Olson has been Photoshopped into a picture of the ICC Galleria. Man, this picture made my holiday.

Nice.


3. If Ivan Batischev / Ivan Batishchev / his mom doesn't get in trouble for this e-mail, tell your parents they can look forward to my rebuttal to each of Todd Olson's e-mails from now on, along with poems I write under Jack DeGioia's name, cookie recipes, and crude Todd Olson Photoshop jobs:

I have always wanted to send an e-mail of some of my bullshit to gustud@georgetown.edu. Eventually, with this list of Georgetown parents, I hope to tell Sonia Jacobson she can authorize mass Georgetown e-mails on behalf of my cock because I don't need the provost's authorization any more!

Unless I was high on NyQuil and was the one who wrote this Ivan Batishchev e-mail. In that case, I need to stop being so preachy and learn how to write funnier e-mails when I drink bottles of NyQuil.