About 26 miles off the coast of Southern California, you can feel as if you are a thousand miles away from the United States, and you do not need a passport. (In fact, this island is still part of Los Angeles County and has a 323 area code or is it 213?). As I write this, there is a large horde of young men that have descended upon this magical mystery tour of an island for an annual trip we affectionately call, Catalina.
Category: UCI
-
One of the Stupidest Things I Have Ever Done
Freshman year in university during the mandatory writing class, we were asked to write a short story. I was reading a lot of Hunter Thompson at the time and decided to try my luck at the great writer’s gonzo style. I decided to write about a true life experience that had happened right before this assignment. My marks were dismal, and what I thought to be an entertaining story, was ridiculed by the class and the teacher (who didn’t wear shoes). I struggled, apparently, with the form and function of my writing style which was the last thing on my mind as I wrote the story. Even my good friend Pat sent me to the ground with his critique and I must admit that at this point in my life I had decided that writing was not my thing and I should stick to the nerd world. (Funny enough, as well as Pat and I get along, I still think he hates my blogs, but that is another entry.) So now, in blog form, is the story of one of the stupidest things I have ever done. There will be no pictures unfortunately, probably for the better of everyone involved. I will not use the real names of the people to protect them even though I doubt they read this blog.
-
Things I Remember From the Dorms
Moving to University and staying in the dorms will be a requirement for my child(ren). Take a developing teenager and remove their parents and support lines and stick them in an over crowded arena full of other people in the same situation. At eighteen, the dorms had a strong influence on the development of my character that you may know today! I thought I would go through some of the memories that I remember from the dorms so you can have a little insight as to how I became who I am.
-
You can deep fry anything and it will be good…
After reading Charlie’s ‘Like Oil and Coconut‘ entry and laughing hysterically, I was reminded of a hilarious encounter I have had with oil. I love the stuff and regularly use far too much of it when I cook, or at least too much according to you fat Americans… those last two words remind me of something i was told by a post office clerk yesterday here in England when I tried to pay with my debit card that does not have this integrated chip that all English people have in theirs.
Luke – “My debit card does not have a chip like all you English have.”
Mail guy – “It’s because all you Americans have eaten all the chips.”
I laughed and reminded him that the English are just as fat now-a-days and then we stared at each other. I recommend talking to my fattist friend Xavier if you want to continue this discussion but let me get back to the point of this entry. This is the story of how I enjoyed the benefits of a deep fryer I had found deep in the cupboards of my parents house. I wonder why they hid it so far back in the cupboards and never told me about it?
-
Remote Control Blimp
All my life I have been extremely interested in gadgets. My dad and I would goto Frys Electronics all the time just to walk around and gaze upon all of the useless things that we thought we needed. I would stare at all the voltmeters and the various type of desk lamps they offered. Funny enough the one in Woodland Hills was designed like you were walking into the rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland and I always thought that to be appropriate. As a freshman at UCI I happened to run into a remote control blimp at Frys in Fountain Valley. It cost like $80. Here is the story.
-
Haircut Bets
I have always had this desire to have a flowing mane of hair. Unfortunately with my genetics, that is becoming less likely with each passing day. I have heard that a males hair gene comes from the mothers father. In which case I am going to have a nice shiny head with a ring of hair wrapping the back and sides with outragesouly bushy eye brows. Interestingly, in the last few months I have had a random hair growing from my left eyebrow that is exceedingly long and a different color from the rest of my eyebrow hairs. If I pull it out, it grows back really quick so I choose to leave it in and tug on it in front of people to freak them out. But I digress… the following three part story is about my effort to force myself to grow really long hair.
-
Voluntary Tasering
I love foosball… it can appear to be extremely haphazard and frantic to many people watching. But there are moments in a foosball game where the game has been building up slowly, no goals for ages, a few near misses, some amazing blocks and desperate acts of defense, but no goals. The players know that this cannot go on for ever and the tension will be building. People can be talking to the players and they will probably respond but their mind is at the level of the little red and blue men on the field. You can be in the middle of a conversation with the girl of your dreams, Gandhi, a white shark, buddha, your most feared enemy, it doesn’t matter, you are liable to wildly scream in their face and risk punching them as you flip out after scoring that goal you have been waiting for so long. Here is a time that happened to me…
It was freshman year in university and Pat (I think) and I were playing foosball at the Phi Psi house. While we were playing we are listening to Tele and a sorority girl talk about her sororities male beauty pageant. Tele, being the stud that he is, is supposed to participate but alas he is sick and is unable to participate. They are trying to figure out who should fill in his spot. While one of these intense foosball moments I previously mentioned is going on, I suggest that I will do it. She tells me I need a talent. I consider the situation while blocking an endless onslaught from Pat on the mini soccer field. I half jokingly say that I will get tasered (stun gunned, whatever). The idea is well received by everybody around but I don’t care as I think I am about to score with a fantastic shot from the right back, but Pat’s goalie is up for the challenge. She says we need two people. Nuthead says he will dress up as a cow and beer bong some milk half jokingly. This idea is as valid as the previous one and suddenly everything is solved. I scream “GOAL, BOOYAH MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!” to Pat and the long string of tension has broken after wrapping itself around us for at least 20 minutes. I look up and then ask the pageant planners, “OK, so what happened?”
So the day of the pageant rolls around and Nuthead and I need to prepare as we have done nothing until this point. The format of the pageant is in four parts: swim suit, knowledge quiz about the sorority, formal dress, and talent portion. Nuthead had a cow outfit for some reason and there was always a beer bong around the house. Milk would be purchased right before the event. His swimsuit was something rediculous like board shorts, a wife beater, and an inflateable ducky around his waist. His formal dress was some killer 70’s/80’s looking suit. My swimsuit was my roomate Geoff’s speedos which had a waist of size 24 while I am easily a 32 with huge legs due to me playing soccer 7 hours a day with a stunning tan right above the knees. My formal atire was purchased at the salvation army that day and ended up being pretty slick considering it was thrown together last minute. We went to Grants for Guns to purchase a taser. They were happy to give us one since we claimed it was a gift for Nuthead’s sister. We got two 9-volt batteries and we were ready.
Right before we goto the auditorium we decide to try the taser real quick to make sure it wouldn’t kill me or something on stage. We put the batteries in, turned it on and this thing was mean! We barely touched eachother with it and didn’t want to feel how it would be if you jammed it into your side. The sound is the worst part about it as it sounds like somebody is slapping a lardy thigh with a ruler 5 times a second with fury.
We show up backstage and find our lovely “coaches” from the sorority. They tell us the answers we need to know for the knowledge quiz and then give us a bag of goodies. The best goodie in the bag by far was the gatorade bottle with the label removed and replaced with a homemade label with pleasing pictures and encouraging words and the contents of the bottle were replaced with pure Captain Morgans spiced rum. Nuthead and I decide that since the pageant was soon we should drink all of the rum so that it would take effect by the time we got to the more difficult talent portion of the contest. A great idea of course.
The social science lecture hall was absolutely packed with people overflowing out the back and people sitting on the floor. Thankfully we had a large contingent of Phi Psi’s claiming a good chunk of the seats in the middle left. I come to find out later that the arts department was having a very rare kegger party and our very non-artistic friends had found their way there and practiced the art of drinking so they were floating on the same level as Nuthead and I were after our special gatorade. I gotta say I was feeling a little nervous at this point. The pageant starts and its all bells and whistles and lights and flash. The guys are announced and they walk out on the stage in their swimwear and take a little turn on the catwalk. Everyone else other than Nuthead and I had boardshorts on from what I can remember and with heavy concentrations of muscles on the upper body. My legs looked ludicrously large with this tiny speedo (the first time I had worn one) and who knows how the package looked but I felt that I got a good reaction from the crowd.
We are then told to sit down, without changing cloths I might add, and prepare for the knowledge portion of the pageant. The questions were things like “When was our sorority founded?” and “Who was the chapter advisor?” Nuthead and I were drunk at this point. We didn’t do well but the scoring was obviously not important as they were just arbitrarily claiming how much each question was worth.
We then all go back stage to change into our formal attire. Nut much to say for this round other than we both looked good and we both were more drunk than we were during the quiz round.
Now for the talent portion. I think there was some buzz in the crowd as word had trickled out as to what was going to happen even though we were trying to keep it somewhat of a secret. Nuthead goes first. He walks out in a cow outfit, udders and all, with a beer bong in his hand. He then pours a half gallon of milk into the beer bong and then proceeds to drink it to completion. Amazing! Takes a bow and walks off the stage. The crowd loved it and applauded him as he gracefully found the nearest trash can and then yakked it all out, backstage. The other guys were doing things like playing the guitar, or building them letters, or singing, you know… real talents. Then my turn comes. I come on the stage in my formal 70’s gear lip syncing to “When I think about you I touch myself” and the plan was to do this for only 30 seconds or so. Of course Nuthead let me sweat and this lasted for a minute or more as I performed some weak dance moves. Finally I waved him out he comes in his cow outfit and tasers me in the side until I fall on the ground writhing in pain. The crowd is gasping and laughing and applauding I think. Then in an effort to not lose the crowd, Nuthead comes over and stuns me again with a prolonged 3 second stun with me twitching on the ground the whole time. Then follows up with one final blast just to make sure I am done which I relay to him through some contorted facial expression that I was definately done. The crowd now is not really sure what to say or do as they seemed to feel my pain and were not sure if I was alright. I got up, bowed and stumbled off stage. Good thing I was drunk.
In the end we did not win. It was all rigged and the guy who was not that exciting who built letters for the girls won. It was not important to us. However, our section of the crowd was getting a little rowdy and the outcome was the final straw. Kamran gets his hands on the taser and starts stunning anyone he can reach in his area of the crowd, strangers or not. Bodies are hurdling the chairs two at a time and girls are screaming. Kamran finally gets the taser wrestled away but only after getting a few of our friends for good measure, especially Phil. This cleared the whole auditorium and needless to say the sorority was not pleased with our actions. I think they banned us from any more events like this or at least they didn’t tell us about them.
I had some hardy scars on my side for about 6 months after that night but it was well worth it and a very good memory from university. I would take a tasering any day over mase which will need to be discussed in another blog.
If anyone has any pictures or movies from this event PLEASE get in touch with me. Mine were lost in the great picture deletion of junior year.