Ants

IT'S THAT TIME OF THE YEAR again, when the Square is invaded by just about every boarding school kid in the Northeast. We've had enough publicity and glamour with our recent list of Harvard's cultural elite, so we've stayed clear of the masses congregated here for the Head and instead stopped by E.O. Wilson's office. We'll print an interview with the eminent biologist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner next week. He has a new book out on, well, LIFE. Very broad, considering that his latest book was the seminal history and classification of ants. So much more pleasant to bend over a glass cage filled with swarming and busy little ants than wrestle through the annoying crew fans in the Square. Not that observing the crew fans is much different from starting at an ant farm. In both cases, brawling little creatures bubble up from a little hole in the ground. T-stop? Anthill? They're the same thing. This week we're fascinated with annoying animals emerging out of nowhere. Take Ugly Kid Joe, for example. Five brain-dead members of an unknown California trash metal band suddenly find themselves splashed all over MTV. Or take Tony Gubba, our new British columnist obsessed with American popular culture and shitty sitcoms. "Tony" (not his real name) came to Harvard by way of Oxford (outta nowhere, for all practical purposes), borrowed an English game show host's moniker and nowadays audits classes and bemoans the dearth of curse words on U.S. television. So sit back, and never mind the ants crawling all over the Square or all over this magazine. You're stuck with them.