Where Do We Stand? March 4th

I saw a debate today in the comments under an Emo Philips tweet about whether "March 4th" is a gerund or an imperative statement. I haven't thought about Emo Phillips in 20 years. I haven't thought about gerunds in 30. But just now, while typing "March 4th" above, I thought about Emo Phillips and gerunds.

How am I going to segue from Emo Philips to Illini basketball? Maybe he once played Champaign and I can claim to have seen him in the early 90's at Foellinger or something. Let me Google...

OH MY GOD. I swear to you this wasn't where I was headed. I simply typed "March 4th" and thought "march forth" and then started rambling about a tweet I saw. But would you like to know what college comedian Emo Philips dropped out of? I googled his name and University of Illinois and got this:

So if you don't have the slightest clue what I'm talking about here, first, welcome to IlliniBoard, and two, Emo Philips was a comedian who was always on Letterman in the late 80's. He has had this haircut and this expression on his face since at least 1985:

His comedy style was as weird as his hairstyle. Here's a short clip. This sums it up pretty good. You might be thinking "how weird"? Well... he was (is) this weird:

And he's still around because he tweeted this today and started this debate and the algorithm sent it to me and now I get to start this Where Do We Stand article by talking about former Illinois student Emo Philips:

You might think that AI will eventually replace all Illini writers but men and women let me assure you that it is literaturically impossible for AI to copy Robert's Random Ramblings. Just like Illinois dropout Emo Philips, I am one of one.

Let's get to the I-N-I.