While perusing through last Thursday’s issue of the Grand Valley Lanthorn as per usual (generally the Opinion section, down below the GVL Student Opinion subheading), I found something that made me laugh out loud (or l-o-l), an editorial comic that claimed that Kleiner’s Late Night now closes at midnight.

“Funny,” I thought. “Because that would defeat the whole purpose of Late Night.”

To make a pop culture comparison, that would be reminiscent of some national broadcasting company wanting to take a television program called, oh I don’t know, “The Tonight Show” and pushing it to, say, 12:05 a.m. (which is, essentially, not “tonight,” but instead “tomorrow”) to make room for someone who shall remain nameless — named Leno.

In both cases, it doesn’t seem fair, nor does it seem like the idea would be met with much enthusiasm. Then I looked then up on the schedule, and it appears that Late Night’s closing time was switched right under my own nose, like a traded moustache.

I assume the bottom line is saving money, and I can respect that as a college student. Late Night can’t be an extremely lucrative business on paper. Fundamentally, Late Night is a time after most other restaurants have closed that continues to serve entr?©es. What kind of a person would want to eat a baked potato at 1 a.m.?

The answer: all of us. Late Night used to be packed when I went, back when I still had a steady meal plan. Lines would extend from the counter to far out the opposite doors, buzzing with young adults, all eager to grab a midnight helping of nachos.

I assume the crowds thinned out well before 2 a.m., but were they small enough for the university to lose money? I would assume that the close proximity to the medical marijuana clinic would only heighten sales of nighttime cravings, but that may just be stereotyping.

Perhaps this is just one student growing nostalgic, because cutting the time of Late Night in half does not appear to be completely detrimental to the well-being of the student body. Maybe this is simply one writing major growing more pretentious, arguing about the semantics of a program called “Late Night” when it ends in the middle of the night (for anyone who wondered why it was called ‘mid’-night).

I would assert that the name be changed to something more appropriate, such as “Evening Foodz” (the ‘z’ adds some youth credibility). It just sucks that Taco Bell has already claimed “Fourth Meal.”

Hopefully Late Night does not disappear completely in the future, because getting an overdue batch of loaded fries is a university commodity that we often take for granted.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, have you seen Conan O’Brien’s new show on TBS, not NBC?