Highly Impressionable

This will be a short one, but I feel compelled to post something other than YouTube clips and links to writing challenges at least once this week.

Have you ever hung around with someone so much that you begin to subconsciously take on some of their speech patterns and mannerisms? I remember the first time I was really aware of this phenomenon was my sophomore year of college, after Little Man Stud asked Flunky, Wrath, G'ovich, and myself "Why do you do that?"

"Do what?" we replied.

"That thing with your hands."

Turns out, over the months that we had been hanging out together, the gestures which Flunky and Wrath used for emphasis when speaking had sort of merged together and been adopted by us as a whole; we had been totally unaware of this adoption of behavior until it was pointed out by someone outside of our circle. Once aware of it, we all strove mightily to keep from doing it anymore.

The reason this is on my mind is because I have recently noticed that certain turns of phrase have entered my speech patterns without me full volition. The one that I keyed in on is the use of the word "bud" when talking to the guys: "You doing okay, bud? Talk to you later, bud. Hey, bud, what's up?" Both PigPen and Li'l Random use it quite a bit, so it's understandable that it has started to replace my former default of addressing the guys as "sir," which itself was a byproduct of my having watched An Evening with Kevin Smith II: Evening Harder wherein Smith talks about how Jason Mewes was responsible for spreading the "sir" speech meme among all of their circle of friends. Yes, I am easily influenced; after hanging around The Cardinal only a couple of times, I had already adopted his exclamation "Oh, good night!" as my own.

I'm sure if I thought about it some more examples would pop into my head, but I'm really sleepy, and a bit drained mentally due to multiple non-bloggable events,* so I'm just going to leave this with one of my rare calls for input from the masses; any of you have any examples of such behavior? And for Squiggly, the Singles resident psychological disorder diagnostician, is allowing your behavior to be subliminally influenced by the behavior of others really normal?**

*Yes, I know people hate when I do that, but that's the most you're getting out of me on the subject
**Normal***
***Yup, that's right: inside joke alert.

Do YOU Know Where My Podium Is?

My Junior year of college I finally gave up the long fight against the inevitable and declared English as my major; I had no intention of becoming a teacher, and little real hope of being a real writer, so exactly what I planned to do with the major, I had no clue. But it was the one subject where I felt on pretty solid ground, and so there I went. As with most college programs, in the English department there were professors I loved, professors I loathed, and professors who had next to no impact on me whatsoever. One of my favorites was my Intro to Brit Lit II professor, Dr. W. He was a bit eccentric at times, but honestly, what English professor worth talking about isn’t? Plus, it was an entertaining sort of eccentric, and he definitely made class entertaining. So, if he was one of my favorite professors, why was I involved with a prank on him? I blame peer pressure, with the peers being the then-current officers of the English Club – including a fellow Wyandotte High School alumnus -- all of whom were in that Intro to Brit Lit class with me. While I would be an English club officer later, at that point I was merely the only non-elected member to show up to every announced meeting and/or function. So, when one of them came to the others with the idea to pull a prank which had apparently become a tradition with Dr. W., I got pulled in as lookout. The prank? Hiding Dr. W.'s podium.

Now, as pranks go, this one was pretty harmless, and for most professors, probably pretty innocuous. But when Dr. W. lectured, he held on to his podium like it was the only solid piece of ground in a vast plain of quicksand; there was no pacing around the room, just much leaning on the sturdy piece of furniture. Many theories abounded as to why he clutched to the podium so tightly, but in the end all that mattered was that the podium was a bit of a crutch and the English club officers yanked it right out from under him, moving the podium to the next class room over shortly before class started while I kept watch in the hallway. We then hurried back into the room and took up our regular seats, awaiting the promised floorshow.

When Dr. W. entered the room, he noticed the lack of podium pretty much instantly. He stopped in his tracks and pivoted towards the room full of expectant students -- the majority of whom, while not actively participating in the prank, were complicit due to their silence while watching us do the dirty work. No sooner had his gaze fallen on the class then one of these onlookers burst into uncontrollable laughter before turning to the rest of us and exclaiming "I'm sorry, guys, but I'm no good at this sort of stuff!"

So much for playing the "we have no idea what you're talking about" card, huh? But at least her exclamation was addressed to the room in general, so the guiltiest parties weren't singled out. Dr. W., who had endured such podium thievery before, announced that he had been planning on letting our class out early that day, but now he thought he'd just keep us the full time; luckily, we all knew it was an idle threat. Seeing that his threat hadn't shaken any of us, Dr. W. then moved on to roll call, which went something like this:

"Molly"
"Here"
"Jen"
"Here"
"Kat -- do you know where my podium is? No? Okay. Delinda."

And so on and so forth, with random class members receiving the probing question. When he reached the name of one absent student, he proclaimed "I bet she took it; she's probably walking around campus with my podium in her pocket as we speak." And so the rest of the class went, with Dr. W.'s lecture being punctuated periodically by references to his missing podium until he finally, as we knew he would, let us go early like he had originally planned. Don't know how long it took him to track down his podium, but by the time we came back for our next class, it was back in place.

When the student wh0 had been absent that day heard the story, she jokingly complained to Dr. W. that she didn't appreciate the fact that he thought she was big enough to fit a podium in her pocket; then, that Thanksgiving, while she was in charge of taking care of her nieces and nephews, she engaged them in an arts and crafts project which she would present to Dr. W. on the last day of class: a miniature "pocket sized" podium made out of popsicle sticks, which he proudly displayed on his office mantelpiece at least until I graduated; for all I know, it could be there still.

Cap'n Obnoxious

I've been in an odd mood the last couple of days. Not quite the usual black mood, but not exactly a happy, chipper, sunshiney mood either. Maybe it's best summed up as an anti-social mood; I don't particularly want to be around people, and when I am, I find myself antagonizing them without meaning to. It's that "without meaning to" part that gets to me; I mean, my friendship with PigPen thrives on our near constant, deliberate mutual antagonizism, but last night I found myself being what I can only describe as downright obnoxious -- it was only when I heard a bit of an edge in PigPen's tone that it dawned on me that I had slipped into Cap'n Annoying mode, and I quickly removed myself to the other room to keep myself from inadvertently pushing him to acts of violence.

It's been known to happen.

Let's take a trip back to Parker Hall, Spring semester, 1994. It was around the time that we were playing The Assassin Game, and everyone was walking around with faux weapons like stage knives, disc shooters, and, of course, water guns. The exact details leading up to the incident are hazy in my mind, but from what I can recall, I had been haning around in the first floor lounge, messing with Special K, swiping his gun, shooting him with it, being an all around pest. Special K told me to quit it, but I guess it didn't quite register with me how serious he was about it. Finally, I went to the "swipe the gun" well one too many times, as I grabbed it, took off running, and was almost immedatiely slammed into the tile of the Parker lobby by a flying tackle from Special K. At first, I thought it was all part and parcel of typical guy rough-housing, until Special K wrestled me onto my back and I looked up into a fire red face contorted in rage. I immediately stopped struggling and meekly handed over the gun. Special K headed to the stairwell, hollered over his shoulder at me "When I say stop, you better stop, punk!" and stormed upstairs while everyone on the first floor stared in shocked disbelief.

You see, Special K was a front-runner for "The Nicest Guy in the Dorm" award; and now suddenly, I was front runner for "The Obnoxious Jerk Who Managed to Piss Off the Nicest Guy in the Dorm" award -- not exactly my proudest moment. But it was one I would be forcibly reminded of for a few weeks as I discovered that Special K's tackle had bruised my ribs, and I was unable to take a deep breath without wincing in pain for quite a while. I apologized to him for being an obnoxious twit (by note, of course), and he apologized for losing his temper, and everything was copacetic, but the thought of that encounter still makes me cringe -- not because of the brief skirmish (which is, incidently, probably the closest I've ever been to being in a real fight) but because of how I was able to drive someone to such a rage without realizing it. I like to think I'm more perceptive than that, but there are some times when, for one reason or another, that section of my brain shuts down, and I wind up pushing my friends to the breaking point. Honestly, it's like there's a part of me that wants to pick a fight, which is insane, since I'm pretty sure I don't know a single guy who couldn't beat the ever-loving crap out of me if provoked, but there you go. As with many of my neurotic quirks, this doesn't happen as often as it once did, but it still rears its ugly head now and again, at which point I just have to shut my trap and sequester myself until it passes -- either that or let someone beat the mood out of me.

Zero at the Bone

Yesterday I referenced one of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems* in the subject line of a post.

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,--did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

Thinking of that poem always takes me back to my undergrad days, since I was first introduced to the "narrow fellow" poem in my Intro to Literature class my first semester as a full-fledged English major.** That was one of the few college classes where I ever felt like I was singled out as "the smart guy," or, less charitably, "that #$&# suck-up brown-nosing #@$(&@#$."

You see, in general I never felt comfortable speaking up in class because I usually felt like my thoughts on a work were pretty obvious, and I didn't want to speak up and have people rolling their eyes going "Well, duh!" Not that that ever happened, but when has paranoia ever bowed to logic? Anyway, in this class, I never worried about that for a few different reasons.

First of all, the professor was a highly intelligent woman, who often had trouble scaling her comments down to fit the lowest common denominator. In a class filled with people looking for an easy humanities credit, that's not exactly a good fit; at one point, as she handed back papers she remarked that a good portion of them were filled with grammatical errors that should have been corrected in grade school, and that to those offending papers she had attached a flier for the college's writing center so that the poor souls responsible could seek help -- fliers, I must add, that were a bright neon color, and thus easily picked out by anyone sitting near the recipients of what a friend referred to as the professor's version of a Scarlet Letter -- only instead of a scarlet A it was a neon I for "illiterate."*** Quite often her call for input would be greeted with a sea of silence, and I would feel duty-bound to speak up lest she think we had all been struck mute.

My confidence in speaking up was magnified by the fact that I had actually taken the professor before for an Honors section of Freshman Comp a couple of years earlier, and so felt pretty comfortable that I knew what she was looking for in terms of completing assignments and in-class comments from day one Probably the biggest overtly brown-nosing comment I ever made in class capitalized on this fact. We were discussing Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener," and when she asked for thoughts on why the narrator didn't fire the shiftless Bartleby I spoke up with my thought that the narrator obviously enjoyed creating fantasies about the private lives of each of his employees, and that his fascination with doing so was even stronger with the quiet, bland Bartleby, who was practically a tabula rasa. My use of the phrase "tabula rasa" perked the professor right up, who congratulated me on my insight, asked "Does everyone know what that means?" and then headed towards the black board to write out the Latin phrase and explain that it meant "blank slate." I could feel the dagger stares at me from all over the room, but I couldn't help it because (a) it was honestly what I thought, Latin phrase and all, and (b) I knew that in my previous class the professor's favorite phrase had been "If you know the Latin root, all becomes clear." Wrath teh Berzerkr can back me up on that one.****

And finally, there was the makeup of the class. As stated before, it was mostly folks looking for an easy credit; it was also primarily Education majors and, well, let's just say that many's the time I have wept copious tears at the thought that those people would be responsible for shaping the minds of future generations. Case in point: while discussing the Dickinson poem, our professor asked what we thought the last stanza meant. After the usual bit of extended silence, I proffered that I had taken the "zero at the bone" line as a reference to feeling chilled to the bone; someone else then spoke up and said they thought it meant that encountering the snake made Dickinson feel as if she were nothing compared to it. And then, one of the future teachers put in her two cents: "I, like, thought it was because, y'know, snake don't have any, like, bones? So, y'know, zero bones?"

Seriously: copious tears.

Of course, Little Ms. No-Bones was one of the worst about giving me the stink-eye anytime I would say something moderately intelligent; her best friend was a close second. I remember one day after the professor had returned a paper to us, and then left the room for some reason; one of the Stink-eye Sisters glared across the circle of desks***** at me and spat out "I bet you got an A, huh?" A bit surprised by the venom in her tone, I matter-of-factly replied "Yeah." Her friend then asked me "How?" in such a tone that made it sound like getting an A from this particular professor was akin to a miracle.****** I responded that I knew what she wanted to hear, and that's what I wrote. Both of them recoiled as if I had uttered some sort of blasphemy, like catering to the professor was a horrendous sin. But I learned early on in my college career that there are professors who wanted you to make passionate, well-reasoned arguments about your personal opinions, and those who just wanted you to regurgitate what they had fed you; the trick was figuring out which was which and acting accordingly*******. And, to be honest, this professor was closer to the former than to the latter; you just had to know how to speak her language.

Unfortunately for many in that class, speaking her language required a polysyllabic vocabularly . . . not to mention a Latin root or two.

*For extra fun, try singing it to the tune of "Yellow Rose of Texas." Heck, try doing that to any of her poems; it almost always works
**I later revisited the poem in my Creative Writing class when I wrote a poem calling G'ovich "the narrow fellow in my house." Yup, doing writing assignments where I compared my roommate to a snake; good times, good times.
***Didn't think that sentence was ever going to end, did ya?
****A close second for her favorite phrase in that earlier class was "Okay, class that was a good discussion, but maybe next time we can actually focus on the essays?" which was said at the end of almost every class period. Wrath can back me up on that one too.
*****It was a college English class for underclassmen; of course the desks were in a circle
******To be fair, for many people, it was; I got the impression that I was one of the rare souls brave enough to take her for more than one class.
*******I know there are folks who balk at "playing the game" in college, but I always just saw it as part of the whole package and didn't sweat over it too much.

The One Where Coronela Sees More Than She Wanted

One day during my Freshman year of college, a nice quiet afternoon relaxing in the Parker living room was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Coronela, who ran into the room emitting loud, incoherent cries of distress, circling the couches a couple of times, and then exiting, followed by Captain Ego who was running after her exclaiming, "I saw it too, Coronela, I saw it too!" I, being highly concerned about my friend's well-being, of course, and not being the least little bit nosey, nosireebob, followed, and was just able to hop on the elevator with the two of them in time to hear them commiserate about their shared trauma.

You see, it had been a nice day outside, and several people had been running around enjoying the nice weather. One of these active individuals had come back inside and sat down on the floor, back against the wall, knees bent, feet on the floor, legs spread just far enough that his shorts . . . well, did you ever see that episode of Friends about Phoebe's boyfriend who wore shorts? Yeah, that's right; as Coronela was walking by, something caught the corner of her eye and she wondered to herself why this guy had a hot dog hanging out of his shorts . . . and then realization set in, and the screaming began.

To this day, I have no idea if the guy had any clue about just what sort of show he had put on, or if he ever knew that from that point on most of us referred to him only as The Hangman.

All Your Base Are Belong To My Roomies

On my first full night at the new place, I found myself caught in a college flashback, as I reclined on the couch, splitting my time between reading a book and watching my two roomies play video games. Dox* only knows hours I spent doing the same thing while rooming with Flunky, Dr. G’ovich, and Wrath. There are differences between the experiences, of course, and I don’t just mean that now my roomies are playing Xbox instead of Super-Nintendo. No the personalities involved are vastly different as well: nobody’s going to confuse The Anti-Cap’n or PigPen with Flunky or G’ovich. Plus, so far I’ve avoided getting sucked into playing games against them when I know their skill level dwarfs my own, whereas in the Parker days the Doc and Flunky were gifted in the ways of video game peer pressure. Now, whether it’s just that I’ve reached the point in my life where such pressure no longer fazes me, or whether the A.C. and PigPen just don’t know which psychological buttons to push to get me to cave is open to debate

I’ve always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with video games, I suppose. Love to play them: hate how much I suck at them. Honestly, you’re more apt to hear me lose control of my vocabulary while playing video games than just about any other time; if you see me pick up a controller, it would be wise to get anyone with overly sensitive ears out of shouting range.

One of the contributing factors to my not playing much with the new roomies is the sort of games they’ve been playing: Halo 2 and one of the Madden football games. I’m not really a big fan of first person shooter games, due to my inability to hold the map fixed in my head. I have spent a bit of time playing the solo campaign mode on Halo 2, but pretty much only when the others aren’t around to mock my poor spatial sense . . . Heaven forefend they ever witness my pathetic attempts to drive the blankity-blank truck in the game. As for Madden, well, in addition to the fact that having to listen to Madden’s inane chatter throughout the game is enough to turn my mind to jelly, there’s just something about most sport themed games that refuses to click in my brain . . . much like me trying to play actual sports.

Parkerite Video Game Flashback: When we had the house on Knoblock, we had a cheapo football game for the Super-NES which came from the bargain bin at Hastings. G’ovich delighted in thrashing me at the game, one time even going so far as to play the whole game upside down and still murdering me.

Good times, good times.

Another flashback occurred when PigPen installed Civilization II on my computer and proceeded to spend just about every free minute he had trying to emerge as the undisputed ruler of his computerized world, a behavior highly reminiscent of everyone's favorite future world conqueror, Flunky, back in the day. And, much like back in the day, I have next to no desire to play the world-building/conquering game myself, but am endlessly fascinated by watching others play.

All that being said, I’d probably be much more apt to jump in on the video game playing if they game styles being played were slightly different. After all, while I’m not necessarily good at them, I’ve always enjoyed fighting games a la Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat or, my favorite, Battle Arena Toshinden, if for no other reason than that sometimes random rapid button pushing is just as effective as actual skill. I don’t have much of a knack for learning special moves, especially if they’re any more complicated than the basic “back-back-A” style, but when I do learn one, you can prepare yourself to see it a lot.

Parkerite Video Game Flashback: One time we rented a dinosaur-themed fighting game. G’ovich and I spent a good hour or so playing it, trying to figure out the special moves with no luck. Our game-play was interrupted by my having to head to class; when I returned, I was immediately greeted by G’ovich with an invitation to play again, said invitation accompanied a look of faux innocence which practically dripped Eeeeeeeeevil. Sure enough, while I was out The Doc had deciphered the mysteries of the special moves, and gleefully demolished me for several round before finally growing bored of his utter domination through special moves and passing on the secrets, so that he could then utterly dominate on a more level playing field.

Good times, good times.

I also enjoy your basic side-scroller games, if for no other reason than most of the older ones take all the guesswork out of the "which way should I go" decision making process, as a quick game of Super Mario Bros. on PigPen's trusty old Nintendo reminded me. It was kind of strange playing SMB, which I probably haven't played in over a decade: most of my game playing skills were rusty (many, many jumping mishaps), but it was amazing how many of the easter eggs I remembered on those early levels. Guess it's just like riding a bike . . . an analogy that would mean much more to me if I ever actually learned how to ride a bike, but that's a totally different blog post.

*Comic book reference

L.P.

Back when I was living in Parker Hall there was a 2nd floor resident who some of us thought of as The "Hey" Guy because, for the first year and a half we lived there, that's pretty much all we heard him say. You'd be walking to class, pass him on the sidewalk, and have your presence acknowledged by a mini shooting gesture accompanied by his trademark, low-key "Hey." Compared to him, I was practically an exhibitionist. But one day something happened to change all that. You see, The "Hey" Guy got sick. Really sick. Not cancer sick, or Ebola sick, but definitely brainmelting fever, ER visit, and brain fogging meds sick. Don't know if it was the illness, the meds, or the one-two combo, but suddenly midway through the Spring semester of Sophomore year, The "Hey" Guy's inner extrovert spoke up . . . and it wouldn't shut up. Not moving in the same social circle as The "Hey" Guy, I'm not sure how long his newly unleashed personality had been in effect before word began to spread that the quiet guy wasn't quite so quiet anymore.

The question you're probably asking yourself is "How exactly did the change manifest itself?" Well, okay, maybe not that exact question, but something similar, right? Well, I think the best way to describe it is that it was like the fever and meds had combined to knock out the portion of his brain that acted as a censor. If a thought popped into his head, odds were good it was coming out to his mouth. The prime example of this was when I got to hear him go into horrifyingly explicit detail as to how the illness affected his bodily functions, oblivious to the protestations of most people around that no, it was okay, they really didn't need to hear about his difficulties urinating, thanks. To this day I regret that I wasn't in his Speech class that semester; from all reports, following a particularly out there presentation, his professor was almost convinced the he had either had a nervous breakdown or become a meth-head -- possibly both. But while I did miss out on that, there were some other examples of the altered "Hey” Guy that I got to witness firsthand, since, in his newly outgoing state, he was spending quite a bit of time hanging out with the usual Lounge Lizards.

The "Hey" Guy's explosion of exhibitionism coincided with a visit from Flunky Lover's younger brother, who was a bit of a skater punk at the time. His presence elicited the confession from The "Hey" Guy that in high school he had dabbled in skateboarding. However, his attitude towards his former hobby was a bit defeatist, with him proclaiming dejectedly that he was never any good, and had been (and I quote) just a "lamer poser. A lamer, poser, loser punk." And thus was The "Hey" Guy transformed into L.P. The revelation that L.P. had once been a pseudo-skater was trumped by the fact that during this conversation L.P. suddenly bolted upstairs, returning moments later with his skateboard in tow. We were then treated to a demonstration of his lamer poser loser punkness in the Parker parking lot.

The other big thing I remember from this time was when the emboldened L.P., freed of his inhibitions, got up the nerve to ask Coronela out on a date. As part of the date they rented The Lion King, which I remember for two reasons. First, neither of them had a Hastings card, so they had to borrow mine. And the second, more striking reason, is that partway through the movie L.P. turned to her and said "You know, you can call me Simba if I can call you Nala."

Coronela, of course, declined.

As time went on, people began to question how much of L.P.'s behavior really stemmed from the meds, and how much was just him taking advantage of an opening to say and do whatever he wanted with no worries about the consequences. I think it was probably a pretty even mix of the two, but regardless it wasn't too long before L.P. settled back into a slightly more normal mode of behavior. But while his mental censor was repaired, the former shell from behind which he previously flung his "hey"s was, if not totally demolished, at least reduced in strength. L.P. would never spend as much time among the Lounge Lizards as he did during those days of fever-driven freedom, but his time as The Hey Guy was a thing of the past. I don't know if I'd recommend mind-warping illness as a tool for all quiet folks wanting to break out of their shells, but I can't deny its effectiveness.

"Ohhhh, in-X-s!" The Cap'n Neurotic Cheet Sheet Parkerite Edition

Continuing with our tour of jokes, references, and random phrases that haunt me, we shall now move into the Parker years.

To start off, I'm going to focus on the more general phrases before heading into the vast abyss known as "things Zinger and I quote all the time much to the consternation of others." This is by no means an exhaustive list, just the ones that sprang to mind the easiest.

Blasphemer! I honestly have no idea where this came from, whether I was channeling a movie, TV show, random person, or what; all I know is, for a good portion of my Freshman year, anytime anyone would make a remark denigrating something I liked (e.g. "I hate coke, Dr. Pepper's the best"), said remark would be greeted without my outstretched arm pointing accusingly while I bellowed at them in an exaggerated tone.

Stop. Stop. Please stop. This one is courtesy of Flunky, who was mimicking a former school official of his who would recite the phrase is a nasal, rhythmic near-monotone. Others of us adopted it as well.

Yah, anyvay This one came from Wrath teh Berzerkr; his parents hosted a foreign exchange student who would say the phrase all the time. Wrath and his sister began imitating it, and it eventually spread to the group.

Bing-bing-bing! During my Sophomore year there was a girl in the dorm who seemed to be with a different guy every other day; a comment about how much she bounced from guy to guy coupled with seeing an episode of the old cartoon "Ricochet Rabbit," led to Ricochet's signature cry "bing-bing-bing!" being added to our repertoire; sort of the Parker version of "'Tis a pity."

No, YOU played college basketball? One of the defining moments of Little Man Stud's time among the Parkerites came at an OSU football game where he expressed disbelief at the news that a certain, shall we say, diminutive dorm resident played college basketball; it wasn't the disbelief itself that stood out so much as the constant repetition of the disbelief. The phrase itself was often used in response to statements of disbelief from LMS and others.

Ohhhh, IN-X-S At some point during our college career, Wrath had a breakthrough when he realized that the name of the band INXS was actually a play on the phrase "in excess"; this became a phrase used when someone was a little slow on the uptake.

Two shiny dimes! This came from a story Dr. G'ovich told about an old guy in a nursing home offering the Doc a princely sum of two shiny dimes to help spring the guy.

Another nacho in his bag Take one Parker resident's complaint that all she was to a certain Eeeeeeeeevil Parkerite was another notch in his belt; add Coronela's mishearing of the complaint; mix well; serve.

Man oh man I hate them fancy lads This quote from Cabin Boy was used by David Letterman in reference to Chris Elliot's character; we appropriated it and used it as a reference to all of the frat boys around.

This brings us to the dreaded realm of TV & Movie Quotes. Since many of the following are either (a) self-explanatory or (b) do not easily fit into any firm usage rules, I'm just going to group them by their source. Trust me, this is just the tip of the iceberg, my blog-monkeys, just the tip of the iceberg.

Airplane
The fog's getting thicker. And Leon's getting laaaaaaaaaaaaaaarger.


Friday
Puff puff give! You're messing up the rotation!

Greg the Bunny
A'ight! (note: pronounced "ah-ig-it" not "ah-ite")

Major Payne
I oughta change my name to Pimp-daddy Payne
Killin' is my business, ladies, and business is good!
Chuuuuuuuugga-chugga-chugga-chugga, toot toot!
I guess I better dig a little deeper into my repertoire.

MTV's The State
Go go go go go!
Rosemary!
Los Estados Unidos

The Sandlot
You're killing me, Smalls!

Super Troopers
Littering and . . . littering and . . . littering and . . . smoking the reefer.
Shenanigans!

UHF
Something blue, something bluuuuuuu-uuuuuuuuue
Roadmaps!
Are you ready Weaver?
Red Snapper, very tasty!
and, of course, the quote that got me some blank stares from The Singles recently:
Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Stupid! You! So! Stupid!

Soundtrack of My Life v.2: Canciones de Coronela

If my exposure to different types of music increased in high school, it practically exploded when I went to college, thanks to access to MTV, alternative radio stations, and the CD collections of my friends and roomies. While my associations with songs in High School were primarily tied to events, most of my college associations are tied more closely with people.

I probably associate more songs with Coronela than anyone else, which is mainly due to the fact that she tends to associate with songs very strongly, not always positively.


Some of the highlights include:

"From a Distance" by Bette Middler: Coronela hated this song with a passion, a fact that Rudy and I would use to torment her by working the title phrase into our conversations:
"Hey, Rudy, from a distance, that looks like G'ovich walking across the lawn"
"You know, Cap'n, from a distance, you're right."
These exchanges usually ended with Coronela threatening us with great bodily harm.

"Stay" by Lisa Loeb: I remember hearing this song for the first time while The Clique was hanging out in the Parker Hall Council office. Coronela was playing her Reality Bites soundtrack, and when this song started she exclaimed how much she liked it. As I started to listen to the lyrics, I could see why; Loeb had perfectly captured some of Coronela's recent relationship experiences.

"Devil Went Down to Georgia": Another song Coronela hated with a passion, which, of course, was also used to torture her; I remember one time when Flunky insisted on singing the entire song while we were eating at Shortcakes, despite Coronela's constant begging for him to stop. Sometimes I wonder why she kept hanging out with us . . .

"100% Pure Love" by Crystal Waters: Coronela used to sing a snippet of this song to one of the guys in the dorm, substituting his name for one of the lyrics. To this day, I can't hear the song without hearing her voice in my head: "I'm gonna get you Robert, I'm gonna get you, yes I am!"

"Gin and Juice" by Snoop Dogg: Coronela would constantly break into the opening lines of this early Snoop song; subsequently, everytime I hear the song, it's a duet, with Snoop on the radio/CD and Coronela in my head: "With so much drama in the L-B-C, kinda hard bein' Snoop D-O-double-G". Related story: when Snoop's "What's My Name" first came out, Coronela would go around constantly saying "You don't love me, you just love my doggie style," up until the day she say Wild Orchids and found out what that really meant.

"I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" by Meat Loaf: The time: October, 1993, Freshman year of college. The setting: Parker Halloween Dance. The action: swept up in the power and majesty of Meat Loaf's epic love song, Coronela and I were moved to put on our own little floor show, performing an impromptu lip-synch performance. So, 'til the end of time, whenever I hear this song, I shall instantly picture Coronela in tattered brown rags, covered in "dirt" with wild, teased-out hair . . . which instantly makes me think of her wild dancing later on in the evening where she was head banging, banged her head the floor, knocked herself silly, and tried to crawl under a chair to recover.

Good times, good times.

Valentine's Day Meal Massacre

The following story is told at the behest of Zinger, who I think still has nightmares about this particular Valentine's Day . . . I doubt my paltry words can do justice to the horror (or the hilarity) of this particular Valentine's Day excursion.

One year back in the Stillwater days Zinger, Pooh, Coronela, and I headed over to a restaurant in the neighboring town of Perkins for dinner on Valentine's Day; if I recall correctly, Pooh had heard good things about it from someone in one of her accounting classes, so we decided to give it a try. And thus began one of the most memorable dining experiences of my life.

Things started out fine; the restaurant wasn't even close to being full and we got seated fairly quickly, albeit without any menus. Things started to go downhill once our waitress arrived at the table and informed us that there was a very limited menu that evening, consisting of steak and . . . well, steak. We all thought it was strange, but didn't question her too much; after all, who doesn't love steak . . . plus, she quickly struck as the type of person whose head might implode if she had to conjure up an actual thought. So, after having her repeat the limited menu (which she read off of a very worn looking post-it note), we gave her our orders and visited with each other while we waited for our food to arrive.

And waited.

And waited.

And finished off our drinks.

And waited.

And waited.

And watched as other people around us were served meals which most definitely were not steak.

And waited.

And waited.

And wondered if our waitress had fled the country.

And waited.

And waited.

And saw the long-missing waitress just standing in the kitchen when one of her more industrious co-workers happened to open the door.

And waited.

Finally, our waitress appeared, bearing our unusually-restricted-selection orders; we questioned her about why others around were eating non-steak items, and she looked at us like we were speaking a foreign tongue. She then went off to get us some refills, and we started to dig in to our meal. It was at this point that Pooh discovered that her steak was cold. If we had been in a movie, there would have been a big "dun-dun-DUN!" musical cue as lightning flashed in the background. For you see, out of all of my many, many outspoken friends, there is none quite as prepared to rip off your head and punt it into the sewer if she feels she's been mistreated or cheated as Pooh, as many a hotel clerk, contractor, city official, and other unfortunate incompetants can attest.

So, we all sat there, waiting for the waitress to return with our drinks and demonstrate if she had even the barest glimmer of a survival instinct. When she eventually came back, Pooh informed her of the chilly nature of her food; the waitress looked at her quizzically for a second, trying to translate the news into something her brain could comprehend, and then grabbed the plate and headed back to the kitchen saying "I'll go nuke it for you."

Unsurprisingly, the idea of microwaving the steak until it was warm went over like a lead balloon, but we were all too stunned at the prospect to say anything before she had disappeared back into the kitchen. Pooh declared she would not be eating it if it had just been nuked, and we began to postulate about what else could possible go wrong with the evening. Zinger made a crack which struck me as particularly funny (something about how with the way our luck was going the restaurant wouldn't accept cash, check, or credit card, instead forcing us to pay in beads from Argentina) which was unfortunate, as he had made the crack just as I took a drink, causing me to spew Coke all over poor Coronela. Luckily for all involved, when the waitress returned it was obvious someone had saved her from herself, for Pooh was not presented with a microwaved slab of meat.

The capper to the evening came as we were exiting the restaurant; Coronela was walking out first, head turned towards the rest of us, so she never saw the huge sandwich-board blocking her path until after her collision with it brought her to the ground. Now, you must understand that, by this point in the evening, having suffered through the inept ministrations of our waitress (who, I'm pretty sure, got a pretty lousy tip that evening) we were in that giddy state of mind where even the smallest thing can prompt gales of laughter; watching Coronela's tumble nearly brought the rest of us to the ground as well.

Schadenfreude: it's not just for Germans anymore.

Meal-wise, it was one of the worst dining experiences I've ever had; entertainment-wise, think it ranks up there as one of the top 10 "laughed so hard my sides hurt" experiences I've had.

Fear teh Wrath!

I had several ideas of what to talk about today, but I’ve not been in much of a mood to write this week, due to a series of mind-fuzzing headaches stress-inducing miscommunications, so instead of addressing any of those, I thought I’d just go ahead and post the following which has been sitting in my “drafts” folder since November: a mini-spotlight on my old roomie, Wrath teh Berzerkr. Of course, since Wrath is of the "would rather stick pencils in my eyeballs" school of thought when it comes to blogs, I could probably say anything at all about him and not have to worry about him knowing; I mean, it's not like the Best Man at Wrath's wedding who also has a penchant for performing Eeeeeeeeevil deeds is a regular blog monkey or anything . . . oh, wait . . .

Okay, so now on to the complete and totally 100% positive, no bad things here, nosireebob, mini-spotlight on Wrath teh Berzerkr.

While much has been made of G'ovich's propensity for randomness, Wrath also dealt in a sort of randomness uniquely his own. G'ovich's randomness would manifest itself in ways to amuse himself (such as "Hey, I've got an idea, for the rest of the day I'm going to try to sneak past anyone and everyone just for the heck of it" or "I know, I won't tell anyone that I got a new job just to see how long it takes for people to find out") or in suggesting oddball games and activities to others; Wrath's random ideas were often more in a "wouldn't it be cool/funny/weird if . . ." hypothetical vein; they were often grander in scale, but subsequently much less likely to be carried out. One of my favorites was his oft-stated desire during Freshman year to pop into classes at random, do his best Macho Man Randy Savage "snap into a Slim Jim!" impression, and then pop back out again.

One of those random idea that Wrath actually carried through took place our first semester, when we were both in the Honors Freshman English class; towards the end of the semester (it may even have been Dead Week) he had decided to shave off his goatee, but wanted to have a little messing-with-people's-minds fun first; so, he only shaved one side. He and I were almost always the first two people in class, so we just sat there waiting for people to come in; he sat in his chair propping his head up with his one hand so that only the shaved side was visible; he would then switch hands so that only the unshaved side was visible; this went on for quite a while (shaved, unshaved, shaved, unshaved) before one of the girls finally caught on.

One other Wrath story that always pops to mind is the Quiet Hours story. You see, during Dead and Finals week, there were strictly enforced Quiet Hours throughout the bulk of the day, with a whole hour of noisiness allowed in the evening to help residents vent. Well, during one of these Loud Hours Wrath had his stereo blasting pretty loud while a bunch of us congregated in the 3rd floor halls. For some reason we moved to a different floor, and forgot all about the blaring music, meaning that once the Quiet Hours started up again, Wrath was in violation. That could only mean one thing: The J-Board!

The J-Board (or Judicial Board) was sort of the disciplinary committee of the dorm; if you broke the rules, you went before them to plead your case, and they then handed out some sort of random punishment; for Wrath, it was to create a sign about Quiet Hours and display it on his dorm room door. Wrath, being Wrath, complied with the edict, but put his own spin on it: the sign read as follows: To Keep the Bliss, Mighty Bass You Must Miss.” Nice and rhymey, huh? Well, there was more to this sign than just the poetical nature, as certain letters were done in a different color and size, making them stand out slightly: "To Keep the Bliss, Mighty Bass You Must Miss.”

Scandalous, no?

Of course, the sign punishment was stupid, and pretty much all of the J-Board and R.A.s who saw the sign just laughed it off, with the exception of one, who just happened to be our R.A. I don’t know if he would have been quite as upset over Wrath’s little joke if it wasn’t for the fact that he hadn’t even caught it; he had seen the sign countless times on his rounds, but it wasn’t until one of the other R.A.s made a comment about it that our R.A. realized something wasn’t kosher. I think Wrath had to endure a lecture about respect and taking things seriously and the like, but that was about it.

I’m sure there are many other Wrath-centric factoids I could expound on here (such as his legendary thriftiness), but if I did that, then this wouldn’t be a mini-spotlight, now would it?

Dress Shoes of Doom

Back in October, Zinger posted the following comment after I talked about my experiences at the BSU:

Anytime you mention the BSU, it reminds me of the day that OSU beat UMass to go to the Final Four in '95... :)

I had meant to talk about that a while back, but got distracted by other things. But when I heard someone mention the BSU earlier this week, the story sprang to mind,and I had to share.

Back during my Sophomore year of college, the OSU Cowboys basketball team made it to the NCAA Final Four. There was, of course, much rejoicing throughout the campus, but I was unfortunately not able to partake of it, since I had to go off with the BSU Drama Team to perform. So, while everyone else was piling into their cars and dragging the streets of Stillwater, honking and hooting and hollering, I was changing into my dress clothes and heading over to the BSU. I got there a little early (as usual) and so was standing out in front of the building watching the endless parade of exuberant Cowboys fans slowly circling the campus when I noticed that one of the cars making its way past the BSU belonged to Pooh, who was carting around Zinger and Coronela. They saw me ad started waving, and since they were moving at a snail's pace, I decided to run over and say hi. So, I set out jogging across the BSU lawn and the next thing I knew, I was down. Apparently, my dress shoes didn't like the idea of me running across the wet grass while wearing them, and took appropriate measures to stop me, i.e. flying out from under me. This display of my klutziness was greeted with roars of laughter from Pooh and the others, of course, and the memory has provided them with ammo for years and years.

However, none of them were around for the next time my shoes decided to teach me a lesson. Again, I was decked out for the BSU drama team; this time the shoes rebelled during a skit. Here's how the skit is supposed to go: one person stands center stage and acts like they're fishing and have caught something big that they can't reel in alone, so they call over the other members of the team, until everyone is acting like they're reeling this big catch in. And what's the big catch?

Why, me, of course.

At the start of the skit I would be positioned at the back of the auditorium/sanctuary/whatever. At the first hint of the first person having "caught" something, I would start moving towards the stage, hands plastered to my sides, legs locked together, hopping forward a few bounces, and then hopping backwards, head moving furiously to show that I was hooked. I would eventually make it to the front, flop up on stage, be helped to my feet, and recite Matthew 4:19: "'Come, follow me', Jesus said, 'and I will make you fishers of men'."

Or, at least, that's how it usually went.

On this one occasion, the Dress Shoes of Doom had something else in mind. Possibly emboldened by their victory on the BSU lawn, the shoes decided to voice their protest over being hopped upon repeatedly much the same way they had protested before: by flying out from under me, sending me hurtling to the church floor (most of the youth thought that my fall was part of the act, and later complimented me on my realistic pratfall). Undeterred, I sprung back up to my feet and continued my journey towards the stage, a journey which was slightly easier now that I didn't have to worry about having both of my shoes rebel against me; you see, the left one had decided to use the confusion of my fall to make a break for it. I made it to the front, said my line, and then rushed off to retrieve the sinister (in both senses of the word) shoe before it could finalize its escape and spread its slick-bottomed evil on the unsuspecting world. Disheartened, the shoes' spirits were broken, and no further rebellions were attempted. I do think that they somehow managed to pass the word on to their dress-shoe brethren however; one pair in particular decided to make my feet writhe in agony when I was a groomsman at Wrath teh Berzerkr's wedding.

And now The Singles know the true answer to why I never wear dress shoes at church.

I'm afraid.

I'm very afraid.

Road Trip, Redux: California, Here We Come!

I had meant to have this up the last week of December, but just wasn't up to transcribing it at the time. But, better late than never right? Please enjoy the chronicles of my holiday road-trip to California.


Back in December of 1994, three of my then-future/now-former roommates and I piled into Dr. G'ovich's Plymouth Horizon (known to many as "the Lunchbox") and drove to San Diego, where the Doc's folks lived. Flunky, Wrath teh Berzerkr, and I all went to our respective family homes for Christmas, while G'ovich, I believe, celebrated with Rocket. The plan had been for the Doc to drive down to the vast metropolis of Wyandotte, OK to get me, and then we would head off to pick up the others. His random nature reared its head when he called to see if it was okay if he came up one night early; my folks said sure, but since he wasn't planning on getting in until relatively late, they went off to bed while I stayed up waiting for him. And waiting. And waiting. I was a tad worried that he might have gotten lost somewhere in the vast metropolis of Wyandotte, but it turns out that his navigational error happened much earlier than that; he had taken the wrong exit and then had to backtrack. But, he finally made it to the family farm, none the worse for wear.

The next day we headed to the nearby city of Joplin, MO, ostensibly to get supplies for the trip, but I think it was more of an excuse to find something to do; surprisingly enough, not a lot of excitement readily available at my childhood home. We hit the mall, which wasn't exactly a thrill-a-minute either. The one thing that it did provide for us was located at the dollar store, which we had entered looking for some cheap crap to entertain us on the drive. It was there that we made one of the greatest purchases $1.00 purchases I’ve ever made: plastic rapiers.

Five will get you ten that it was the Doc's idea to buy them, but a better idea, I doubt he's ever had. Basically, we bought four of these cheap plastic swords with the idea of staging our own little sword fights. Let me tell you something; those things hurt! You look at them and think, oh, yeah, little plastic swords, big whoop, but when the Doc and I got back to the house and went out into the front yard in order to start wailing on each other we soon found that the thin plastic swords whipped with sufficient speed to leave some nasty welts. We basically spent the remainder of our time in Wyandotte beating up on each other with the swords.

The next day we packed up The Lunchbox, and prepared to hit the road. As G'ovich started to turn the key in the ignition, I turned to him and said "Bet my folks will start singing Happy Trails before we leave." He gave me a disbelieving look, but as soon as the car started, so did my folks.

"Bom-ba-dee-da, bom-ba-dee-da, bom-ba-dee-da, Happy Traaaaaaaaaaaaails to you!"

And so, we backed out of the driveway, leaving my parents to perform an act that would have embarrassed almost any child living, but which did not faze me in the slightest, and headed to Tulsa to meet up with Wrath teh Berzerkr. After picking him up, we then headed down to Texas to Flunky’s grandmother’s house where we spent the night before hitting the road again. At that point in time, I still didn’t have my driver’s license; I did have my permit, but couldn’t drive a stick, so I wasn’t able to join in the driving rotation.

The car ride down was pretty uneventful; about the only thing that stands out in my mind has to do with a package of pecans that one of the others brought along as snack food. Now, I’m not a big fan of pecans, either in stuff or by themselves; I suppose I must have reacted pretty forcefully when offered some to eat, because G’ovich decided that I must be suffering from a pecan phobia. After that, I would periodically find the package thrust into my face as one of them yelled “Look out, Todd, pecans!”

We eventually made it to San Diego, or, more accurately, to the Doc’s mom’s place in Coronado. Although the name may not ring a bell, you may be more familiar with Coronado than you think; the bridge connecting Coronado to San Diego was featured in the title sequence of the show Simon & Simon, and the swanky Hotel Del Coronado (or Hotel Del as its usually called) has popped up in quite a few places, most notably on such high class shows as Silk Stockings, Hart to Hart and, of course, Baywatch. Oh, and the exteriors of Some Like It Hot were filmed there too. But, I digress.

The next morning we were all going to head down to the beach. I, for some reason, decided to hop in the shower first; when I got out of the shower, I discovered that the other three had headed on down to the beach without me. Can you hear the strains of “Cap’n Cellophane” playing? I know I could. Getting directions from the Doc’s younger brother, I set out for the beach. Luckily, Coronado is an island, so that even though I got turned around and headed in the wrong direction for a while, I was eventually able to find the beach and the others.

There was an odd sinkhole of sorts on the beach, the edges of which were practically quicksand; marveling at this wonder of nature soon became a game of trying to wrestle each other into the sinkhole. Later, we all got some wetsuits and ventured into the water. The others tried their hands at surfing; I did not. Not a big fan of the water at the best of times (I’m still unable to go under without holding my nose), so the idea of engaging in an activity that would require great skill and co-ordination to keep from being dunked under repeatedly didn’t appeal to me.

I remember the four of us heading out to play some basketball, an activity which, of course, conjured up my insecurities about my lack of athletic prowess. Not too long after that we went bowling with the Doc’s dad, an activity which, of course, conjured up my insecurities about my lack of athletic prowess. Oh, and then there was the evening that we were trying to play hacky-sack, and activity which . . . do you sense a pattern here?

We wound up being in San Diego for New Year’s Eve. We had thought it was going to be great because, surely, in San Diego, California, there had to be some great party to go to, some big event to crash.

We couldn’t have been more wrong.

Oh, I’m sure there was some magical experience just waiting for us out there, which would have resulted in us having the time of our lives, but if there was, we never found it. Instead, we wound up going to something that turned out to be, if I recall correctly, some big environmental rally; not much in the way of fun there.

Before we headed back home, we made a side-trip to Tijuana. Now, I wasn’t too excited about going to TJ, having been to Mexico a couple of years earlier with a group from my high school; my experiences in what my classmates and I had dubbed “Murder Alley” in Mexico City made me a little paranoid about the four of us venturing into the streets of TJ, but Wrath was pretty gung-ho on going, so go we did. Of course, my paranoia was groundless, and nothing untoward happened on our little jaunt across the border, but it serves as yet another example of me letting my negativity get in the way of me having a good time.

The ride back to Oklahoma was about as uneventful as the ride down had been; the biggest difference this time was that, instead of tormenting me with pecans, the game was to torment each other with the California Earthquake.

Oh, how to describe the California Earthquake? Maybe if you’re really lucky, Coronela still has it and will be able to scan it in for me to post it. Suffice it to say, the CE was a lovely postcard that we discovered at one point and all agreed had to be sent to Coronela. Of course, we didn’t get it sent before we left for home, and so instead used it to frighten and nauseate each other all the way home; there you'd be, minding your own business, turning your head to look out the passenger window, and wham!, there was the California Earthquake, being held right at eye level.

I still have nightmares.

And that’s my California trip in a nutshell. I’m sure there’s much of interest I’m omitting and/or misremembering; as usual, my selective memory has robbed it of most of the exciting bits. And, as usual, I’ll leave it up to Dr. G’ovich to point out my shortcomings.

Go On, I Dare Ya!

One of my favorite things on the TV show Ed was the running joke of "I'll give you ten bucks to [insert absurd dare here]" Outisde of the general amusement factor, a large part of what I liked about it was that it reminded me of my college years. In particular, it reminded me of Dr. G'ovich, who often indulged in his function of "devil on the shoulder" to dare or bet others into questionable activities. For a while he and The Old Man did a variation on the Ed thing, only at a much cheaper rate; I believe their bets were $1, although they may have gone as high as $2. The only one I remember distinctly was one that The Old Man balked at; the Doc had offered him a buck or two if he would stand up on the table in the lobby, drop his pants, and sing "I'm a Little Teapot." The Old Man refused; he had no problems with getting up on the table and dropping his pants; no, it was the song he objected to. Not singing in general, but that song in particular; he wouldn't even sing it if he'd been able to keep his pants on. Some people.

Whammy, Wowee, Zowee! You've Just Been Pranked!

Pranks.

I stink at pranks.

I just don't have the devious mind necessary to concoct them, unlike most of my former roomies. But, when you're stuck living with a bunch of guys, whether it be in a dorm or a house, there's no way to avoid being embroiled in them; pranks are a way of life.

One of the most popular ones in the dorms was the "penny lock." I don't pretend to understand the physics of it all, but the basic idea is this: you stand outside the dorm room, pushing against it as hard as you can, jamming pennies into the space created near the handle, which somehow keeps the door from opening. One of my favorite examples was when one of the guys on my floor had his phone cord stolen by his "friends" right before they locked him in, so he was forced to resort to sticking his head out his window and yelling at passersby for help.

I myself was never the victim of a pennylock; not for lack of trying, I'm sure, but more due to room placement. You see, in most cases in order to get enough pressure on the door to place the pennies, one of the pranksters would push off of the wall facing the door; since my room opened up onto the elevator landing, this was impossible. Now, the only attempted penny locking that I know of was doubly futile because I was aware of it happening. You see, Rudy and I had been tormenting Coronela somehow (quite possibly by trying to work a certain phrase that was also the title of a song she detested into our conversation every chance we got; that was one of our more regular Coronela-baiting tactics) and she had finally given chase; we raced up stairs to my room. Since she couldn't be on our floor unescorted, she grabbed Captain Ego to be her token male presence. When we refused to open up for her, they decided to attempt a penny lock. Of course, not only did they have difficulties getting the necessary pressure, but Rudy and I would periodically jiggle the door, causing the pennies to fall and roll under my door; torturing my friends has never been as profitable for me since.

Another frequent prank was the use of thumbtacks on the elevator doors in the dorm. Basically, if you place a tack in the rubber part of the door, the doors would close all the way, but the sensor would think they were still open, so the elevator wouldn't go anywhere; I believe G'ovich made reference to this in his "Very Bad Things" post a while back. I remember one occasion where we had gotten on the elevator with one of the female residents of the dorm who was in a foul mood to begin with; when all of the guys got off on our floor, G'ovich placed the tack, and we all congregated outside of my door to watch the fun; the doors opened, and she was fuming, storming past us to the stairs, not even caring that she was unescorted. I don't think my description can possibly do the situation justice.

Other Parker pranks included the "face-paint" incident which helped bond Flunky and G'ovich. I was out of town that evening, so I'm a little blurry on the details, but it basically boiled down to the two of them going around the dorm and smearing facepaint on doorknobs, pool cues, etc. in order to get it all over the hands of unsuspecting dorm residents. I can still hear Flunky's whispered threats of "Facepaint! Facepaint!" echoing in my mind.

And then there were the fireworks.

You know those pull-string fireworks? The ones where you have to pull on a string on each side to make it go off? The kind that seem just perfectly crafted to attach to your roommate's bedroom door so that they pop whenever he opens it up? I think you see where I'm going with this.

One person you didn't want to prank was The Old Man, or at least, so his stories led us to believe. He regaled us with tales of a time while he was in the Coast Guard when a prank war broke out between him and a crewmate, a prank war which escalated into destruction of personal property. Whether the stories were true or just a way to discourage people from messing with him, I couldn't say, but they served that purpose pretty well.

I’ll close with a recounting of a one-time prank that happened when I was still rooming with Bubbles. One day I got up not long after I heard Bubbles head to class and opened the door to our room, only to find the doorway completely covered in a wall of cotton. My biggest question was not who had done it, but how the heck did Bubbles get out, since I was pretty sure it hadn't been him behind it. I later found out that the barrier had indeed been there when he first got up; he had taken it partway down to go shower but, being such a considerate roomie, he had put it back up when he left for class so that I wouldn't miss out on the experience. What a swell guy, huh?

Oh, and three guesses which oft-mentioned blog monkey was responsible in the first place.

TAG, You're Dead!

The transcribing of the holiday tapes has finally commenced. First up: playing T.A.G. with the Parkerites.


Early in my Freshman year of college, somebody in Parker decided to organize a game of T.A.G.: The Assassin Game. If you're not familiar with the game, it goes like this (or, at least, our version went like this); the organizer of the game takes the names of all of the players and creates a circular structure of targets. Person A has Person B for a target, Person B has Person C, and so on and so forth until finally Person Z has Person A. The objective of the game: to "kill" as many targets as possible without getting "killed" yourself; once you "killed" your target, you took over their target as your next hit. You could only "kill" your target or your assassin, and you could only "kill" your assassin if they drew on you first.

And how did you "kill" someone? With little plastic weapons. Once the game was underway, you suddenly saw everyone walking around with water guns, dart guns, disc guns, plastic knifes, etc. Basically, if you tagged them before they could tag you, they were dead. The whole building was a safe zone, as was a small section of sidewalk outside the building as a concession to the smokers in the dorm, who would have had a fit if they couldn't get their nicotine fix without some degree of safety.

I remember playing at least twice that first semester. The first time, everyone was talking about who their targets were, and who had killed them, and so on, so that by the end of the first day, a group of us had already figured out the entire circle of doom; needless to say, that first round was over really quickly. For the next round, such jabbering was verboten.

I never was all that great at the game; the whole stalking your target thing just wasn't my forte. I was pretty pleased during that first game when one of the targets I managed to whack had my roommate as his target; I mean, who doesn't long for a chance to bump off their roomie at one point or another? Of course, since this was the first game, he knew that I was after him, which made things a bit tricky. We had been joking around about it, with me following him around, him acting like he was going to leave and then veering back inside at the last minute, goofy stuff like that. At one point he was standing outside in the safe zone, talking with some of the smokers; I went over to another player and asked if I could borrow his retractable plastic knife, stuck it in my front pocket, and headed outside. He saw me coming and made sure that he was inside the safety zone, which extended to the end of the first big block of concrete in the sidewalk; once you were past that first crack, you were fair game. He did the usual goofing around, acting like he was going to leave the safe zone, while I protested that I didn't even have my gun on me. It was around this time that one of the R.A.s who was out there pulled out a bottle of bubbles and started blowing them. My roomie started following them around, acting like he was mesmerized, saying "Ooooooo, bubbles," and the like. So intent was he on his goofy charade that he followed the bubbles right out of the safety zone; I hopped out, "stabbed" him, and hopped back in: victory was mine! And now you know where he got the nickname Bubbles from.

My victory was short-lived; it wasn't long before I met my own demise during a function at the BSU. Not sure who it was that ratted me out to my assassin, but there I was, sitting in the floor of the worship hall, doing some stupid ice-breaker, when suddenly I saw a fellow third-floor Parker resident coming down the stairs, disc gun blazing; due to my cross-legged seated position I was unable to extricate my own gun in time, and was thus slain, much to the confusion of pretty much every other person at the BSU.

My death in the second game was all due to Coronela, who wasn't playing this time around, due to her becoming a bit too high-strung the first time around due to the machinations of a certain Eeeeeeeeevil individual; I swear, at one point when he popped up in front of her outside the dorm she screamed loud enough to set off car alarms outside. Anyway, I was heading to the BSU for something and she asked if she could walk with me, since she was heading to something in the same direction. So, we made our way across campus, and crossed the street to the BSU. I started to head to the back entrance which I almost always used, but she turned towards the front, so I followed her. We both walked up to the front door, at which point good ol' Bubbles jumped out from behind the bushes and gunned me down. Yup, Coronela and Bubbles were co-conspirators in my execution. It didn't bother me so much that she had betrayed me; if only it hadn't been to him. I mean, I lost all bragging rights for knocking him out of the first game. But, at least I wasn't distracted by bubbles; that's something, anyway.

I honestly have no idea who won either one of those first two games; we played again the next year, but my heart wasn't really in it, and I got eliminated pretty quickly. And that would be the end of my T.A.G. playing days; it wouldn't, however be my last association with the game. No, that would come about four years later during my time among the Book Monkeys, which I'll talk about tomorrow.

Road Trip!

I'm really not a spontaneous person; I know this will come as a great surprise to many of you, what with all of my talk about paranoia and fear, but it's true. 9 times out of 10 when I get a last minute call to do something, my instincts scream, "No! You're having so much fun just sitting around her, lounging in your pajamas, flipping through the channels, doing absolutely nothing of consequence whatsoever, why ruin that with fun?" Maybe I exaggerate at little. But not much.

One of the few spontaneous things I remember doing was the road-trip to Dallas to see Jimmy Buffett in concert.


It happened early in my Sophomore year. One Friday afternoon Pooh-bear returned from class saying that she had just heard about the Buffett concert, and she was determined to go, whether anyone else wanted to accompany her or not. I told her that I would go with her; I wasn't a super-huge Buffett fan, but I had been friends with Pooh long enough to have some appreciation for his music. While we were planning our escapade, we had two more volunteers to join us; both of them were Freshman with whom I had had little contact at that point: Little Man Stud and the heretofore-unmentioned Soccer-girl.

So, the four of us piled in Pooh's car and headed down; we of course had no tickets, and so were hoping to find a scalper with reasonable prices. Yes, that's right: our plan was contingent on the existence of scalpers. Still not sure what possessed me to agree to this.

We were a ways into the drive when Little Man Stud asked "So, Jimmy Buffett; he sings Brown-Eyed Girl, right?"

Stunned silence.

"I don't think so," we replied, "pretty sure that's Van Morrison."

"He may have done a cover of it," Pooh said.

"Oh."

So, there we were, halfway to Dallas, and Little Man Stud had just discovered that the one song he thought he knew by Buffett wasn't really by Buffett. But we were not deterred; or at least, the rest of us weren't deterred, and Little Man Stud was trapped. Thanks to our impeccable timing we hit rush-hour traffic in Dallas, and were stuck at a standstill while Pooh despaired of making it to the concert on time. We finally made it to the Starplex, the venue which was housing the concert. Traffic was still moving at a snail's pace, and we found ourselves stopped right next to a scalper. We rolled down the window, inquired to his wares, were quoted what must have seemed like an acceptable price, and made the transaction. Then we moved down a few more yards and were greeted with a rather obese white guy yelling at us for buying from “that [racial epithet],” saying that if we had bought from him instead we would have saved us some money. His racist rage was actually pretty amusing.

We finally made it into the parking lot, and moved on into the Starplex. Now, if you're not familiar with the Starplex, there are basically two levels of seating: there’s the nice, assigned, covered seating, and then there's the cheap-ass, sit on the side of a grassy hill if you can find a spot seating. Guess which we got. But we had been prepared for this, and were able to find a relatively good spot on the hillside. We settled in and waited for the concert to begin.

There was a huge smoky haze drifting out of the nice seating, a haze which, when it reached us, had an unusual odor which I, sheltered as I was, was not familiar with, but which the others, coming from larger cities, were; that's right, a good number of people in the crowd were smoking the reefer. At a Jimmy Buffett concert! Who’d have thunk it?

One of my favorite memories was being bumped into by a stumbling drunk girl who got beer all over my Eskimo Joe's sweatshirt. She leaned down to apologize which is when she got a look at my shirt. "Hey, are you from Stillwater?" she slurred. I admitted I was. "Do you go to OSU?" Guilty as charged yet again. "I go to TCU; we played you guys in football!" With each syllable her hands shook, splashing more beer on me; yes, there's nothing quite like being showered with beer from the hands of a Texas Christian University student.

Partway through the concert, the band started playing a familiar, yet unexpected song; Pooh, Soccer-girl, and I all turned to Little Man Stud and said "Hey! You were right!" To which he replied, "What?" Shaking our heads in disbelief we said "Listen to the song!" He looked at us quizzically, but then turned his attention back to the stage, at which point Buffett finally hit the chorus of Brown Eyed Girl and Little Man Stud finally had his moment of realization.

After the concert we were all starving since we hadn't stopped for anything on the way down. We went to Planet Hollywood, which had mediocre food like most theme restaurants, but we had a good time. On the way out I stopped at the gift store and picked up a keychain, which was the standard souvenir I would buy for my mom on any of my trips.

Following our dinner we hopped back in the car and sped home, and I do mean sped. I don't know quite how fast we managed to go, since Pooh's digital speedometer only went so high, and we were still accelerating after it stopped. Ah, to be young and reckless again.

Getting back to OSU pretty late, we all went back to our rooms and collapsed, and woke up early the next morning for Parents Day. That's right; Friday night: road trip to Dallas. Saturday morning: football game with the 'rents.

Pooh and I were very upfront with our folks; the first thing I did when I saw my mom was hand her the keychain and say "Guess where I went last night!" Little Man Stud, on the other hand . . . I'm pretty sure his parents still don't know about our little roadtrip. Not wanting to be disturbed in his sleep, he had turned off his phone's ringer, so when his parents tried to call up to his room to let him know they were there, no answer. His dad went up and banged on his door to wake him up; he told them that he hadn't gotten any sleep because someone kept prank calling him, and that's why he turned his phone off.

So, that's basically the most spontaneous thing I've ever done in my life.

Ever.

Sad, isn't it?

Just to Be Clear: At No Point During This Story Was Anyone Actually Stripped Naked

Yesterday's Prairie Fire/Garbage Bag story was told because it was b-day related, but there was another Little Man Stud story that popped into my mind first . . .

During the last semester of my Sophomore year, Little Man Stud overheard a group of us planning some nefarious and ill-fated scheme, and, wanting to be a part of it, came over to ask us the details. I believe it was Wrath who responded, although it very well could have been G'ovich: they're equally capable. Whichever one it was decided to grant Little Man's desire to be a part of our scheme by telling him that we had been hashing out the following plan: at precisely midnight we were going to grab him, strip him naked, tie him up, and leave him as a surprise for Flunky, who was then currently off on drill. This got the usual "No. Seriously? No. Really?" response from the Studling; the dubiousness was well-founded this time, since it was, of course, total B.S.

Fast-forward to later that evening: most of the usual lounge lizards had already headed off for the night, leaving basically the same group who had been involved in the aforementioned discussion. Glancing at the clock, Wrath announced that it was time, at which point we all rushed the Little Man. He went to the ground, crying "My ankle, my ankle!" Or possibly, it was his knee. Whatever. The point is, everyone backed off, at which point the big fibber took off like a shot, racing for the stairwell. G'ovich gave a brief chase, but the rest of us just laughed and laughed: we knew we'd never planned on actually doing anything to him.

I was gone most of the next day due to a BSU drama team trip; when I got back to Parker that evening G'ovich called me over to tell me that they had made a deal with the Mini-Stud: if he would tell everyone that we had stripped him and left him tied up in Flunky's room, we would all stop calling him Skippy.

So, the Skippy thing: basically, Wrath and G'ovich had been telling him that they held so much power in the dorm that they could give him a new name, and everyone would call him by it. Little Man Stud was (shockingly) doubtful of the claim, so the diabolical duo dubbed him Skippy and so he was known by one and all. Armed with the knowledge that the Skippy thing was going to be a thing of the past, I went on about my business for the evening, thinking nothing else of it. Until the next day, that is, when I got off the elevator onto the first floor and walked straight into a group of girls sitting in the lobby whose first words to me were "Can you believe Little Man Stud is going to go to the J-Board about you guys?"

Now, you must realize that, at this point, I had not yet had my morning caffeine, and was therefore not firing on all cylinders and so completely unable to make the connection between their question and my conversation with the Doc the previous evening. But, being a veteran of such random conversations after nearly two years of friendship with G'ovich, Wrath, Flunky, et al, I instantly responded "It's his word against ours," and then sat down, saying no more as I stalled, waiting for my neurons to start firing again.

My brain finally kicked in, and I quickly figured out that Little Man Stud had decided to play up the drama of our little arrangement, which shouldn't have surprised me: I'd seen evidence of him wanting to take jokes to their breaking point before. Apparently he had been going around telling everyone that he was so upset over our prank that he was going to turn us over to the dorm's Judicial Board. The act went on for a day or two, LMS acting like he was extremely ticked at us all, while we all played along . . . well up to a point: he eventually tried to talk us into staging a fake fight in the lobby, but we begged off. Robbed of the chance to have it escalate, Little Man Stud let the drama die off; not sure how long it was before everyone else found out it was all a scam.

My favorite part of the story is that when Little Man Stud told the girls about the situation, they were all pissed . . . at him. Yes, that's right, the girls were upset that Little Man Stud was going to turn us in for a little thing like stripping him naked and leaving him tied up in another guy's room. "It was just a joke," they said, "he shouldn't be so upset." Souls of compassion, those gals.

No, Seriously? *You* Just Turned 30? No. Really?

Time for a b-day shout-out to Parkerite Little Man Stud, who just hit the big 3-0 today, and who, like yours truly, shall be graduating with his Masters this weekend; of course, the fact that he's an engineer with an MBA means he'll probably be pulling in slightly more than my librarian salary . . .

Anyhoo, how about a quick Little Man Stud b-day story here?

When Little Man Stud turned 21, we did the traditional college "take him out to the bars to get him plastered" thing. A group of us went to Eskimo Joe's; folks took turns buying him shots, and Wrath brought him a little concoction known as a Prairie Fire, which is basically vodka and tobasco sauce. Yummy.

Well, Little Man Stud, having no clue what was in the concoction, threw back the shot, slammed the glass down, shoved his chair away from the table, leaned over retching, reached into his front pocket, and pulled out . . . a trash bag. Yes, that's right: a trash bag. So there he sat, hunched over the open bag, trying depserately not to hurl, while all of his good friends died laughing at the picture: only Little Man Stud would have come prepared for his night of drunken revelry with his very own makeshift barf bags. Luckily, he was able to keep from spewing, and Wrath bought him a less toxic drink to make up for it. That was the only Hefty-bag-worthy moment of the evening, but it definitely left an impression on all of us there.

So, Happy B-day, Little Man Stud: may your MBA prove lucrative, and may you continue to look the same now as you did in college . . .



Seriously, he doesn't age! I think he's got some Dorian Gray type picture stored somewhere, absorbing all of his sinful excesses so that he doesn't have to . . . y'know, that could be why he didn't hurl that night . . .

10 More Land Units!

Let's go back to an earlier time, a simpler time, a time when I was still naive enough to think that going along with Dr. G'ovich's plans was a good idea . . .

The following entry is made possible by my old cassette recorder, which I just recovered from the Stoneheart residence, where I left it many, many months ago.

As usual, I can't recall the exact genesis of the plan; I believe it was something G'ovich pitched to Flunky, and which I somehow invited myself along on, although the invitation may have been extended willingly; who can say? What I can say for certain is that on the afternoon of Sunday, Oct. 30, 1994, Flunky, Dr. G'ovich, and I left Parker Hall and proceeded to Lake McMurtry on foot. I'm iffy on the exact distance we traveled, but it was at least 12 to 13 miles; don't ask me how far we thought it actually was, or why we thought it would be a good idea to do it; I was just along for the "don't want to be left out of things" ride.

So what does my tape recorder have to do with this journey? Well, at some point during the trip we decided to document our travels; of course, since we didn't start doing so from the beginning, we had to recap everything that had happened up to that point by re-enacting scenes from along the way. The beginning of the tape goes like this:

Flunky: Flunky's Log: Stardate, Sunday, 10-30-94, 2 P.M. What is that I see? Bamboo! I've always wanted that! Let's get it
G'ovich: Think of all the stuff we could --
Flunky: Oh no! There's a dog barking! Run, Todd, Run!

Ah, yes, now that? That would be the sound of my best friend mocking my emotional pain: specifically, my severe panic attack caused by a stray dog. When the mutt started following us I was a little leery, but not overly freaked at first, since it seemed like a friendly enough animal; however, when it came up behind me without me realizing it and licked my hand, well, I freaked out: froze up, stopped moving, maybe even cried a little bit . . . okay, okay, definitely cried a little bit. You see, when I was four years old, I had my head ripped open by a neighbor's German shepherd, which has left me a little, shall we say, touchy, at times, when it comes to canines; I'm all right around dogs most of the time, but there are certain situations that just set the fear off majorly: apparently, strange dogs coming up on me without me realizing it is one of those.

Needless to say, my two future roomies were puzzled by my intense reaction to this harmless mutt licking my hand, since the whole head-ripped-open thing had never really come up before for some reason. I was pretty embarrassed by the freak-out, of course, so they made a joke out of it to lighten the mood; G'ovich told me it was a friendly dog, no need to get vicious just because, and I quote (wishing I could properly duplicate the demonic voice he used) "it wants your soul!" Flunky started calling the mutt Killer; I, for some reason, insisted on calling it Charley; G'ovich named it Lucky. We all referred to it as "dumb dog" at one point or another, but the friendly thing followed us all the way to the lake.

Other highlights covered in our over-acted, overly-exaggerated re-enactments included seeing various dead animals; Flunky finding a magazine of questionable content that he insisted he was only keeping for the articles; having a strange van stop and ask us if that was the road to Lake McMurtry and offering us a ride; the beginning of Flunky's oft-repeated assurance that the lake was "only 10 more land units," followed immediately by my cry of "shut up!"; passing the point where Rocket's car had broken down earlier that semester and then been towed away, leaving only the muffler behind; oh, and more dogs barking. Which brings us up to this point:

Flunky: Alright, that about sums up everything that's happened so far; it is now . . . 5:16, and we're almost there.
G'ovich and myself: 10 more land units!

Not long after this came Flunky and my singing our version of "I Saw the Sign" upon seeing a sign for the lake, followed quickly by Flunky noting that the lake had more quiet hours than our dorm. And then there was G'ovich's cataloging of the strength of his bamboo stick, which he had been testing on various objects along the way:

G'ovich: Okay, so far, my bamboo is stronger than aluminum, stronger than . . . leaves
Flunky: Stronger than the little puffy things
G'ovich: Stronger than the puffy things
Me: About equal to a mirror
G'ovich: It's stronger than sticks, roughly equal to a mirror . . . and a mailbox, I think [Cap'n Neurotic disclaimer: we didn't really try it out on a mailbox . . . I think] But it's so far indestructible.
Flunky: Next test is --
Me: Next test is Flunky's head.
Flunky: No, I was going to say Todd's head.
Me: {unintelligible yelling at Flunky}

Upon entering the confines of the park, Flunky went up to a mound of sand, and planted a flag in it (whether it was something he found or something he brought with him, I have no clue), saying "I claim this lake in the name of Parker."

Now, by this point, it was getting close to 6:00, and we really didn't want to walk back, so we found a payphone and Flunky called the Parker Lobby while G'ovich manned the tape recorder for evidence; I, of course, was trying to get a Coke from the vending machine because I was going into caffeine withdrawal.

G'ovich: Now we get to see who our real friends our; gonna make a phone call and see if anybody comes and gets us; if we stay the night, I'm pissed at everybody I know.
Flunky: *on the phone* Who is this? *pause* Michael? Michael who?
G'ovich: Stipe.
Flunky: Hmmm . . . is . . . okay, is Wrath or Pooh-bear or . . . um, who else? *pause* Start yelling out these names.
G'ovich: Who all's down there, anybody?
Flunky: Who all's down there *pause* alright
G'ovich: *massive burst of laughter* Todd's Coke, he just now opened it, spewed all over him.

Once again, happy to have provided the unintentional comic relief; maybe that’s my role in the group . . . anyhoo, there's some brief chatter as we wait for the random Michael to find one of our friends, and then:

Flunky: It's Pooh-bear!
G'ovich: It's Pooh-bear, we got Pooh-bear.
Flunky: *on phone to Pooh* You're a good friend, right? *pause* No?!?! We're recording this conversation, so anything you say --
G'ovich: Can and will be used against you in the Parker Hall Council.
Flunky: Exactly.

Flunky then told her where we were, that we had just gotten there, and that we really didn't feel like walking back. Also told her that we had a dog; she didn't seem too enthused by the idea, but Flunky told her if she brought a leash we could just tie it to her bumper; we'll assume that he was kidding. He then suggested she bring, and I quote, "the cat food" for it, which elicited an "Ooo, ooo, yeah, bring the cat food" from G'ovich. It's the fact that it was the cat food and not some cat food that gets me: why exactly there was cat food readily available to be brought, I have no clue.

The next few minutes of the tape are us trying to entertain ourselves while waiting for our ride to show up by doing little skits (Flunky pretending to have been left all alone, Flunky sending Killer/Charley/Lucky off to find help, G'ovich trying to teach the dog tricks, us re-enacting a scene from the Gary Larson's Tales from the Far Side special involving aliens, cowboys, and "Deep in the Heart of Texas") and wondering if Pooh really was planning on coming to get us ("Pooh-bear told us she'd pick us up, but then she just laughed and laughed: she knew she didn't give a crap"). These shenanigans apparently soon wore thin, as the next minute or so of tape is occupied by Flunky trying to be sneaky and record our conversations without us knowing (oh-so-cleverly trying to cover up the red recording light with his finger), but failing miserably in his covert actions.

Finally, Pooh and Zinger showed up to rescue us, at which point Pooh discovered Flunky had not been lying earlier about recording the phone call. We bid farewell to the dumb dog, and headed back to town. We listened to the tape, and were finished with it by the time we hit the city limits. Once we got back into town we stopped by Toxic Hell, I mean Taco Bell, for some grub, at which point Flunky noted that it was 6:30. We reflected on what we had learned on our journey: G'ovich noted that I had been forced to confront my phobia, and Flunky stated that we found out who our true friend was, which earned a shout of "Me!" from Pooh. We then made up a little ditty about our adventures, sung to the tune of the theme from Gilligan's Island, which earned us a "You're all freaks!" from Pooh. But the fun wasn't quite over yet . . .

Flunky: Okay, we're going to record the Taco Hell lady and see if she gets confused about [can't quite make it out . . . Border Ice? Apparently, I'm just as confused as the Taco Hell lady] again.
Drive-Thru Guy: Welcome to Taco Bell, we'll be right with you.
Pooh: Ok, thanks.
Flunky: Well hurry it up, okay?
*laughter from all in car*
Drive-Thru Guy: I'll try to.
*much more laughter*
Pooh: *embarrassed laughter* Shut up. You guys are embarrassing me; I'm never going to pick you up at the lake again.
Me: You mean you picked up a bunch of guys at the lake?
*nervous laughter from Pooh as she wonders what she did in a previous life to deserve friends like us*

Eventually we got the food (which, with luck, was not poisoned or tainted in any way . . . well, anymore than usual with Toxic Hell’s food, that is), and ended our tape with many thanks to Pooh, assuring her that if she ever walked to the lake, we would be sure to return the favor (which got a "Why the hell would I ever walk to the lake?" response), and G’ovich telling her that she was our favoritest person in the world.

And how to end such an epic adventure? Leave it to the ever-eloquent Flunky to know just what to say:

Flunky: Th-th-th-th-th-that's all folks!