According to ancient Fea-tures lore and Wikipedia, Hemang and Pearson have not always been the Hemang and Pearson you think you know. Though still a mys-terious entity that nobody can quite understand (much like the evasive abominable snowman in mystery and in heft), the dynamic duo has an even more evasive past. Through intense, skillful, professional and 100% legiti-mate investigative reporting, I’ve uncovered what really happened all those years ago - when Hemang and Pearson became Hemang and Pear-son.

It all started 2,013 years ago, when a little baby boy was born in a manger one cold, December’s night. But that’s another story. On a damp morning in April, 1995, a different lad came to be. Pearson Goodman was born after putting up quite a fight in utero. Typical Pearson shenanigans! All one hun-dred United States Senators present at Pearson’s birth watched in awe as the mid-wife held the hefty and dis-appointingly bald bundle of joy up to the sky, mistakenly thinking that he was her cell phone in a poor-signal zone as he kept emitting a dial tone for some reason.

The fetus gazed down at his subjects, and cried out from the heavens something so philosophically apt and ar-ticulate that nobody under-stood it. And you wonder what the Senate has been doing all this time.

They’re obviously still try-ing to figure out the ground-breaking wisdom Pearson shared with us that fate-ful day in the mid-nineties. Unfortunately for Pearson, this meant he forced captiv-ity until a couple years ago when he was freed by the art of Features. But that’s also another story.

Unbeknownst to baby Pearson at the time, his oth-er half was already alive, and had been for quite some time. Hemang Kaul had escaped his prenatal environment the previous October, a month too early. This, as I have found, caused a ton of dra-ma that I probably shouldn’t go into because tears will be shed and wounds will be re-opened, but I’m just going to tell you guys, it’s some pret-ty juicy stuff. Anyway, he was so small at one pound, three ounces, that on multi-ple occasions, really hungry, unnamed individuals put him in a martini glass full of tangy red sauce and called it a “shrimp cocktail.” Hemang claims this is a misleading label. Who knows. No really, who knows?

Where these two ne’erdowells’ stories meet is at a Red Lob-ster. The first time the two of them were at a Red Lobster to-gether, they were sitting at opposite

ends of the

restaurant, and shared noth-ing but the same experi-ence of waiter and a passing glance. This also happened to me once with Kanye West.

The second meal, however, is where things get interest-ing.

It was January 22, 2001, the day after Jorge Bush ’64 was inaugurated. All dressed up and with nowhere to go, the one hundred Senators that had been present at Pear-son’s birth decided to eat like Americans and obnox-iously take up every single booth in the entire Red Lob-ster because of their “private function.” Still absolutely puzzled and enthralled by the mysterious prophecy bespoken at Pearson’s birth, the Senators of course had their captive Pearson, tag-ging behind and chewing at his leash every now and then, trying to break free of the chains.

When finally the waiter came by to take his order, Pearson unknowingly de-termined his future. How scary is that? Just think: one decision that you don’t even really think about can al-ter the path your life takes forever! Just think about it. “Boy, do I love shrimp cock-tail! I’ll have that please!” he said in that totally Pearson way. About six hours later,

the food finally arrived. But among surf and

turfs, grilled mahi mahi and some reddish

lobsters lay one dish that separated itself from the rest: Pearson’s shrimp cock-tail. There was something different about it, something unique. It was singing a ca-pella about how it wanted to run for Student Council President of a prep school one day. It was doing improv. Yes, you guessed correctly. It was little Hemang swim-ming around in some thick V8 with a couple of shrimp watching. “I feel bad about eating this,” young Pearson said. Oh he was always so empathetic.

After being unable to per-form at the dinner table, Pearson asked if he could take the leftovers of his meal home. They wrapped them up, and Pearson took them home. Once home, it took Hemang a while to get the

cocktail sauce smell off of him. Even today, if you smell real close and the wind is just right, you can still catch a whiff. Brought in by ma-ternal figure Pearson and his one hundred Senator fanboys, Hemang grew up and is probably, based on my knowledge of biology, still growing. He and Pearson became the best of friends, which worked out pretty well for both of them, con-sidering Pearson now gets all the shrimp cocktails he wants, and Hemang has the guidance of those one hun-dred Senators that Pearson has wrapped around his fin-ger. Speculation still exists that Pearson’s post-birth wisdom was just baby talk, but I think that is just crazy talk.

February 8, 2013 T h e P h i l l i p i a n FEATURES 11

Features Bids Adieu

Peace ‘n’ pout ‘til the sun comes out!H. HEFNER/THE PHILLIPIAN

Those legs... ;)B. UM/THE PHILLIPIAN

Boy Meets Boy: The Classic Features Bromance

It’s funny because when they told us to roast Hemang, we had to think for a second and then we remembered. It was weird because we didn’t see you in the newsroom for so long. It went like this, Rem: “Who’s Hemang?” Sophia: “I don’t know.” Rem: “Wait a second! That name sounds fa-miliar.” Sophia: “Is he that snaggle-toothed hobo that used to come down here and help Pearson?” Rem: “Yeah that’s the one! He gave speeches at ASM too sometimes.” Sophia: “Our school is so gracious, humoring such a poetically tragic homeless man”. Verbatim. But once we jogged our memo-ries, we remembered how happy we are that you’re going to be graduating. Not because we hate you, that’s beside the point. It’s because we’re so excited that you’ll have a chance to reinvent yourself, you know, to start over. We hate to be the ones to tell you, but everyone talked and we all agreed that it may seem like the “funny hobo” thing is going well for you, but it’s not. There was a vote. It was unanimous. No abstentions: it’s time for a shave, dude.

If it weren’t for all the masculine reminders in your name, we would have thought you were a girl. Maybe it’s your well-kept nails, your mannerisms or possibly just your motherly nature, but we could’ve sworn until we got clued in and lets just say, Universe = blown. Your parents must have foreseen this problem from the very beginning. We’ve seen your baby pictures, so we know exactly what they were thinking. It’s weird you didn’t get their smarts though. We guess the pear son does fall far from the father Peartree. And now that we’re getting all this stuff off our chests I guess it’d be a good time to let you know that we just called you, “The Layout King” be-cause we felt bad for you. Everyone knows you were self-pro-claimed. You don’t have an ounce of royal blood in you. But there is one thing you can be proud of: you taught us how to fill a ton of space with meaningless words. And that is the most important thing of all.

Pearson “Good Guy” Goodman

Hemang "vagabond" kaul

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