TONY:
Well, folks here it is — our final work as editors. I watched a “Friends” episode the other day where Rachel moves out of her and Monica’s apartment to make room for Chandler. They called it the end of an era. Cailley and I may have been essentially living together in the back of the Arts corner for only a year, but this too feels like the end of an era. Regardless of whether readers disapproved of the new direction or couldn’t stand PCPs like these, together we brought this page back to legitimacy. It was a major accomplishment, one that I take my cowboy hat off to Cailley.
For four semesters, Cailley has sat in this corner dealing with everything from unmanageable writers to jackass commenters, but she took it all. Granted this treatment made her a bit more cynical, a disease that passed on to me before our first semester was over, but it provided plenty of opportunity to kick back, pop open a Genny Light and straight up bitch about life.
She may watch way too many VH1 reality shows, which only increased when she finally got cable, listen to bands that fly right over my head — not saying much, because I love country music and don’t understand much else beyond what I hear at the bars I frequent too much — and live and breathe Perez Hilton, but that only made her my savior when it came to picking albums to review or keeping up with pop culture.
In general, I got to hand it to Cailley. She has the arts world down pat and will without a doubt dominate the magazine world when she gets there. I, on the other hand, will go to law school where they will make me clean up and cut my hair. This also brings up a sidenote: I’m jealous your long, flowy hair dominates mine. But seriously, I couldn’t be happier that Cailley beat me out for the editor position a year ago when they made her reapply [Editor’s Note: Big mistake. Great editor and I couldn’t be happier with Cailley this year. Thanks for everything, and let that “Herald Ego” flow. –Smathers]. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have shared/dominated this corner together. Thanks for the memories my little Herald sister.
CAILLEY:
Tony Lewis is…well, it’s hard to say. As he hobbles around the office because of a mysterious injury he incurred on his ankle from a few drunken antics on the roof, one thing is certain: He’s a man’s man, and I sure as hell respect him for it.
It takes a lot to be the Content Editor. It takes balls (and given that he’s a guy, I’m assuming he has them), it takes gusto and, most importantly, it takes a beautiful head of hair.
See, when he first took this job, Tony had a gorgeous feathered hairdo that Kenny Rogers would kill for. In the words of Tina Fey while addressing Justin Bieber on “Saturday Night Live,” “his hair really knows where it wants to go.” And though he was tragically forced to get it cut (a move that temporarily made him look like he was 12), it’s finally returning to its former glory.
As far as his time at the Herald is considered, Tony Lewis is pretty much an institution. He’s written more than 50 movie reviews, done countless interviews and has been a badass in all of them. And luckily, he’ll continue doing movie reviews every now and then as the ArtsEtc. foreign correspondent while in Illinois at law school, because Illinois is like being in another country, right?
In all seriousness, beautiful hair and wondrous Bozo Buckets skills aside, I’m so incredibly happy that I got to work with Tony. For two semesters we were a close-knit team, always on the ball with what was going on, and, more importantly, I’d like to think we’re pretty good friends.
It’s so hard in the great wide world to find someone that you can accomplish so much with, and Tony is a great part of why I’m going to miss the Herald so much. Be it our endless conversations about the latest movie or the jokes about how much he likes country music, we were a team in every sense of the word.
So, you know what, this being the final PCP, let me raise a metaphorical bottle of champagne and say “cheers.” It’s the end of an era, but it ended on the best possible note it could.
