Sundance Yourself To Death!

I've always been a fan of the Sundance Film Festival and independent film in general.  There's this retarded thing in hollywood where a director has a vision and wants to see it fleshed out.  But by the time he brings guys on to finance it, a studio to back it, and a distributor to get it out there, suddenly there are hundreds of people all with a stake in the final product.  Unfortunately, that means all these people have a say in the final product, and what might have once been a good, original idea gets watered down.  So there's something to be said about guys that max out ten credit cards and deal with having to cut back on bloated effects and production values in order to distill their idea down to what matters.  Characterization and story arc.  The Sundance Festival is often times your only chance to see some of these films because more often than not, they're not going to see the inside of your local cineplex.  Sometimes, there's a really good reason for that, but on the flip side, once in awhile, there's some truly great ideas that never get the chance to reach a wide audience.  There's not a whole lot that I like about living in Salt Lake, but I do consider myself lucky to have access to something as great as the Festival every year.  

Four feature films and three shorts this year was by far the most I've ever seen in one Sundance Festival. Sadly, I didn't make the trip to Park City for any of these, instead opting for the screenings within walking distance of my apartment here in Salt Lick. I kinda missed the mountain ambiance (and the $10 beers) of a night in Park City, but on the other hand I discovered a new independent theater, The Broadway Center, that I'm planning on frequenting in the future. I'm even thinking of joining the Salt Lake Film Society as well to support it. Here are my brief reviews of the seven films that I screened at the Festival this year.

First up was a film titled I Saw The Devil. It was directed by Ji-woon Kim, who was also one of the writers for The Uninvited. This movie was in Korean and thankfully had subtitles. Which was nice, because even though at least half of my lesson clients early on in my career were Korean, I still didn't understand a damn thing.  But even if there weren't subtitles, you could still pretty easily figure it out. This movie stars Byung-Hun Lee (who played Storm Shadow in that GI Joe flick last year) as a Korean Secret Service agent whose fiancee falls victim to a serial killer. He then sets off to find the killer and put him through hell, possibly at the cost of his own humanity. 

He could have just nunchucked you right there and you would even have known it!

This movie was fucking violent, as most Korean revenge flicks tend to be, and at times hard to watch. But as gory as it was, psychologically it was even more brutal. Beautifully shot, but might've been a little too long. Good movie though. Afterward, I stopped into the coffee shop next door to the theater to take a piss, and ran into the Byun-hun Lee waiting outside the door to the john. Talked to him about the movie for a few minutes, seemed like a pretty cool guy. My buddy VodkaRob told me I should've tried to fight him for raping our childhoods with GI Joe though.  Good thing I didn't.  Dude would have beaten me about the head and neck with my own severed limbs.

 

A day later, we tied one on at The Tavernacle and walked down the street to the Broadway for the one we'd been looking forward to the most, Hobo With a Shotgun.  It was preceded by a short film titled The Legend of Beaver Dam.  It was the story of a group of wilderness scouts singing songs around the campfire that according to legend, summons a crazy killer. Chaos ensues in a bloody, vulgar, and musical fashion. As a fan of movies like The Goonies and The Monster Squad, I've got to say that I love kids that curse. It was a fun twelve minutes.

Where you probably won't get I Saw The Devil at your local cineplex, there was actually a legit buzz around the festival circles for Hobo With A Shotgun. What can I say? People seem to like the truth in advertising. This flick stars Rutger Hauer (who seems to have entered the Mickey Rourke zone of guys who you aren't sure they are even acting anymore) as said transient. 

Got any spare change?

He jumps off a train during a stopover in Hopetown, a run-down metropolis that makes Detroit look like Dubai, that is ruled by an evil gangster named The Drake.  Seeing injustice at every turn and meeting the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold (usually they just take your wallet), he forgoes his dream of starting his own lawn mowing business and instead takes his last fifty bucks and turns it into a pawn-shop 12-gauge and a seemingly unlimited amount of ammo.  From there he sets about taking back the streets of this urban hellhole, one shell at a time. This one was a bizarre, bloody and overall batshit crazy exploitation-type flick. If you like those types of movies from the mid-70's you'll enjoy this one. From what I hear, they've sold this movie to a distributor, so come April it'll be in theaters nationwide.

Arguably, the best part of Sundance is the documentaries.  So a few days later, I took my little sister to a screening of Resurrect Dead:  The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles.  Before the feature, was a five-minute documentary short titled The High Level Bridge. The film profiled the High-Level Bridge that spans the Saskatchewan River in Edmonton, Alberta, its man-made waterfall and its reputation as a local suicide hotspot. The filmmaker sounded clinically depressed himself. One of the ladies on the golf team that I coach is from Edmonton, and when I asked her about all the suicides off the bridge and if it's an accurate representation of her hometown, she said "That's not what we're aboot back home." Touche'.  Here's the film in its entirety:

A very interesting real life mystery is featured in Resurrect Dead...The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. Dating back to the early 80's, somebody has been gluing peculiar signs to the streets of Philadelphia with a strange four-line message: 

Creepy!

These tiles fascinated a local layabout named Justin Duerr who began a quest to document all known locations of these tiles (which are found in eight states and three South American capitals) and find the mysterious artist who put them there. He teams up with the filmmaker, John Foy, and two other like-minded individuals to attempt to finally solve the mysteries of who, why and how. It was a fantastic documentary and it was interesting to see how these four guys were able to tie together seemingly unrelated clues into solid leads. I can't quite call Resurrect Dead... the best movie that I saw at the festival, but I can say that it was probably the most enjoyable of the bunch.  

Finally, VodkaRob and I wrapped up our Festival experience last Friday night with a midnight showing of The Oregonian.  Attached to this movie was a short titled The Pact. It features a pair of siblings in the home of their recently deceased mother discussing a secret that they share, something that happened in the basement. This one was genuinely scary, as opposed to the feature it was paired with, which I'll get to in a second. And it brought on those feelings of dread without any typical "payoff."

I went into The Oregonian expecting a grindhouse-y type of horror flick. What I ended up getting was a throwback to those late 60's early 70's psychedelic movies or something reminiscent of those "Coffin Joe" Brazilian horror flicks from the mid 70's. It featured a heaping helping of washed out colors and a horrifyingly brutal sound design that was light on dialogue, but heavy on shrieks, grunts, squeals and insane laughter. It was by far the loudest movie I've ever seen. My ears are still ringing. It lacked any semblance of a plot, or overall narrative other than a bloodied girl (True Blood's Lindsay Pulsipher) wandering in the woods encountering strange scenarios. It did, however, have plenty of horrifying visuals including a creepy old lady breathing hard while grinning from ear to ear, a redneck dude pissing all the colors of the rainbow during a pit-stop, a guy in a furry frog costume jerking off against a window, random hicks drinking pina coladas made with gasoline and some suspect-looking milky liquid, and plenty of people drooling bile while laughing. Read that sentence again. 

Thank god this is a still photo!

Most of it was gross, and none of it was scary. It was marketed as a horror flick and ended up being an arthouse flick. The Oregonian was basically an hour and twenty minute acid trip and I was sorely disappointed. But at least I made it all the way through it, which can't be said about the twenty or so people that walked out in the middle of the screening. It came into the festival with a considerable buzz and left the festival getting absolutely crushed by critics and viewers alike. 

So in a week's span, we saw some pretty good films, and a real stinker.  Like I said, sometimes there's a reason these aren't studio pictures.  But overall it was an awesome experience for any film geek for sure.  You ought to make it out here for the festival at least once in your life.  I guarantee, if you spread it around a little bit, you'll come away seeing something you like.  It literally has it all.   

 

In which our hero returns with another Dorm Days Flashback to whet your appetite for things to come…

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. We're so glad you could attend. Come Inside, come inside…

After a couple "false-starts" I'm ready to give the blogging thing a go again. I've got a lot more direction these days, and a lot more creative fire. I'm also ready to talk about what has been happening to me professionally the last couple years. It's been gone now for two years, but I think the story of the last years of the University Golf Course need to be told. I'd also like to branch out a little bit and do some reviews, as well as sound off on a few things going on in the world to anybody that'll listen, or read. So sit back, get comfortable, and feel free to peruse some of my earlier work on this site.
 
Here's a little flash back to my Dorm Days to whet your appetite a little further (or turn you off completely.) I've cleaned it up a little bit, mostly for typos (of which there were many), and changed a few more names around to protect the guilty. I've got to say, I'm fairly shocked at the amount of F-bombs I used to throw around! Anyway, here we go!

"On The Map"

(January 2000)

Originally posted to the old blog in March, 2006

We had just returned from winter break, and I've got to say, it was great to see Apartment 302 once again. I was the first one back, and the first thing I noticed was my John Belushi "College" poster on the wall was stripped of its "frame" of about 90 friction-rubbed beer bottle caps. They had cleaned the joint up! That frame took a lot of work from Big Nick and me to put up there, so much work that I couldn't even remember doing it! But the snapshot Big Nick took of the poster was still stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. "Oh Shit! Hope they didn't discover the stash!" I thought as I went into the back of the utility closet and found, thankfully in the box my stereo came in, five 20-packs of Bud Light 6-percent bootlegged from Evanston, Wyoming (You can only get 3.2 ABV beer here in Salt Lick). Well, at least it was going to be a good homecoming!

But coming back was a little bittersweet. The good news was, the missionary kid, who had threatened to report any of Big Nick's or my own "misbehaviors" to the Dean "for our own protection" no longer seemed to be rooming in The Penthouse, his room was empty. Unfortunately, the old guy "Jerry Flynt", the guy that cooked for us when the cafeteria just wasn't cutting it, was gone as well. While we tried everything we could to get the missionary kid tossed the previous semester, but Jerry's departure hurt. The dude fed us, man.

I heard some keys unlocking the door, "I wonder who is left?" I thought as I hurled the door open to find The Hottie R.A. from across the hall leading a fresh-faced youngster into the apartment. The kid had a Yankee hat on, so well, he had that going for him, which was nice. "Nickas, this is your new roommate, Doug. He's NINETEEN (emphasis on the NINETEEN), make sure he stays out of trouble," she said with a wink as she sashayed out the door.

Shit! Big Nick's birthday was last week. We were finally all twenty-one years old in here. Finally, we could all party out in the open in here without getting written up. And the fucking dean's office had thrown us a curveball. According to the ridiculously detailed ol' Westminster handbook, you could consume alcohol in the main area of the apartment if all residents were over the age of twenty-one. If not, the demon alcohol could only be consumed in the individual bedrooms or the bathroom. Which I always thought was kind of funny. Not that we ever really gave a shit about the rules anyway, but it would have been nice not to get written up for throwing on a drunk after class in our own living room.

Always the fucking ambassador, I introduced myself and helped the kid haul his shit into the apartment. Like everybody else in the apartment, he was the child of divorced parents. But he was the only one with a father in prison! Hardcore! He'd recently quit the Mormon Church to become Catholic, but was having extreme difficulty getting his name off of the church rolls. I knew of a few people who had at one time the same problem, so I understood what he was going through. All of this, and this was his first time away from home. It was pretty overwhelming for the kid, and since he was now part of the family, I figured we all needed to help him out.

Big Nick and The Nate showed up a couple of minutes later and they got their first impressions of Doug. They were admittedly pissed that the Dean's office had given us an underage roommate. But at the same time, and this is a good indicator as to how good those guys were, they made it abundantly clear that it wasn't Doug they were pissed at, but the Student Life office in general. And like I said, since when have we ever given a shit about the rules anyway? Big Nick had stacked one of the 20-packs in the fridge when he had walked in, and the four of us had a toast to a new beginning. The Nate even tagged Doug with a nickname within an hour, and "Junior" was born.

We figured we needed to get Junior acquainted with as many people as we could. So the first week of class, we started introducing him to as many of our friends as we could. Big Nick took him down to the weight room, a newly returned Dowder (the "fifth" roommate in the way that Pete Best was the "fifth" Beatle) introduced him to the Frisbee guys in the quad and I took him door to door on the third floor and the apartment directly below us to meet the neighbors. You had to get in good with the girls on the floor below because then they'd be more likely to talk directly to you about excessive noise than an RA.

We came to the apartment directly across the hallway from ours and I started to get a little nervous. Not only was this particular apartment the RA's room, but also this was where Jules lived. I'd kind of been crushing on this girl pretty much the entire holiday break. Before the break, I was working on the infamous "One-Night" fifteen-page term paper in the small Residence Hall 3 computer lab when this girl came in and asked if I could listen to her class presentation. Evidently somebody had told her that I'd done my fair share of public speaking back in the day and had some advice to offer. So I helped her iron the bugs out of her presentation and we shot the shit briefly before I had to get back to the term paper. A few nights later we met up again at the "Midnight Breakfast" the night before finals began, and I was pretty hip to the idea of asking this girl out. She went home to Alaska for the holidays, and I spent two weeks thinking about what to do.

Junior knocked on the door, and Jules answered it. "Hey, hey! Just wanted to introduce you folks to the motley crew across the hall's newest member, this is Doug!" I bellowed. She invited us in. It was on. We sat down as two of the other girls, Alice and Elizabeth came out to say hello. They started chitchatting with Junior and Jules hollered at me to go into the other room. "How'd your presentation last semester go?" I asked.

"Pretty good, I got an A." She said as she gave me a hug. It was on. "Hey Mike, I think Elizabeth's got a crush on Doug. She said she saw him in the hallway the other day and she won't shut up about it."

"Well, that's certainly interesting. I don't know man, she's pretty Mormon," I thought to myself as I nodded my head.

"You think you could maybe encourage him to get lunch with her or something?" Jules asked.

"I'll say something; see if he's feeling it." And then my brain finally kicked in. For years, I'd been the kind of shy quiet dude, always afraid to really go after something or just plain say it. So instead I made an event out of shit. I wanted to get with this girl, so my primitive brain thought; "I've got to do something big." "I've got a better idea," I said, "Let's throw a party Friday night."

"Like a mixer?" she inquired, eyebrow raised.

"Like a big, wild mixer." I said nodding my head thinking to myself, "if the party in Can't Hardly Wait could be considered a mixer". "The Penthouse, Friday night. Tell all your friends." It was so on.

Now, doing anything of this sort on a wide scale in the close quarters of the residence halls presented a few logistical problems. How not to get caught by the RA's and administration was chief among those concerns. One of us was going to have to fall on a grenade. We left that up to The Dowder, who asked The Hottie RA on a date that night. Hesitantly, she accepted. Next, we had to find out who was the RA on duty. Luckily it happened to be the Comrade. All it took was a bottle of Stolichnaya and a burned copy of Metallica's S&M album and the Comrade was properly bribed off.

Next was the liquor. I had no idea how big this thing was going to get so I went to where I usually got some cheap advice, my Maxim Magazine collection. I found an article from issue #12 in the "How To" section titled "How to throw a soiree'" and followed its suggestions of two large jugs each of rotgut tequila, vodka, gin and whiskey. Plus I bought a new bottle of Makers' Mark and a bottle of Champagne for myself. Adding in the mixers and I must have dropped about $150 on liquid refreshment. With the girls across the hallway making the food, this sucker was on! There was an actual legitimate buzz going around the dorm about it.

I got home a little bit late from basketball practice that Friday afternoon and hurriedly set everything up. Junior and Big Nick got the bar area up and running and cleaned up the house. I cleaned out my Bud Light keg bucket, filled it with ice and got the champagne chilling on my desk in my room. While I was taking care of the last minute preparations, The Nate took it upon himself to start the festivities, mixing himself a gigantic Electric Lemonade. He used his own high-end liquor and we estimated that particular drink in a bar would probably cost about $25. The Dowder, who usually resembled Pigpen from the Peanuts Gang, came out of his room as clean as I had ever seen him, in a nice sweater and khakis. He pounded a shot and left to pick up The Hottie RA. I grabbed a Fosters can out of the fridge and hit the shower for a long one.

I wrapped up my shower about a half hour later and got dressed. "Fuck it. Let's go all out," I decided. I owned at that time this maroon and black Heffner-esque silk smoking jacket. I didn't even smoke! It was cheesy as all hell, but dammit I was feeling it that night, I was going to class this shit up. I was an idiot. One of my high school golf teammates used to wear one on the overnight trips and I always thought it was hilarious, so I picked a jacket up right after I'd moved to Salt Lick. I was comfortable. I walked out and we all had a good laugh. I looked over in The Nate's direction, "How many is that bro?" I nodded at his drink.

"Number four dude." He replied, downing the last few drops of Electric Lemonade and started to pour number five. He was already getting a glossy look in his eyes.

The doorbell rang; it was two of Big Nick's gal pals, Heather and Shauna. They came in, mixed drinks and retired with Big Nick to his room for some "entertainment." We wouldn't see them again until things were wrapping up.

Suddenly people started showing up in droves, we got the music pumping and it was becoming a boisterous occasion. There were at least thirty people crammed into that little apartment. Some friends of ours, but mostly people we didn't know. I couldn't believe we'd thrown something like this together in a few days. The girls from across the hall arrived with a gigantic 7-layer dip in a huge baking dish. The Smokers descended upon it like buzzards to a fresh road kill. Elizabeth had a surprised look on her face. I don't think she imagined a dorm "mixer" to resemble anything like the rager that was taking place. And then there was Jules. She looked absolutely fantastic, with a smile that could launch a thousand ships. "Why the hell does she wear those baggy clothes all the time?" I thought to myself. She was in tremendous shape.

Junior was really starting to get after it, and so was The Nate. The Nate was a big guy, probably twice my size. As I was mixing myself my third or fourth martini of the evening, I looked over at him sitting on one of the bar stools. He was HAMMERED! He saluted me with his sixth Electric Lemonade, leaned his head back and raised his glass to his gullet. As he leaned back, I saw it. Dude's eyes rolled back into his head and he kept going back, going, going, gone. BOOM! He landed flat on his back on the floor. Room 302 shook. The windows rattled. The stereo skipped. Everybody paused for a second, looked, and went back to their revelry. I still had my wits about me so I rushed over to where he was laying on his back, making that sick moaning sound that usually signaled that he was going to hurl. This was a problem. If he honks on the floor, the party is pretty much over based on the smell alone. So I got my buddy Little Nick to grab The Nate's legs and I snagged him by the armpits and we slowly dragged his 350 lb. ass down the hallway to The Nate/Dowder bathroom, I filled up a glass of water and set it down next to his huge, corpse like figure. That boy was destroyed. I looked at my watch, 11:30 pm. "This has to be some kind of drunk-record for Nate." Little Nick quipped. We rejoined the party.

Dowder returned from his date. Dammit! He was supposed to keep The Hottie RA occupied until at least 1:00! "No worries brah," he said, "I dropped her off at her friend's house. That's a weird girl, man." He said as he gathered his crew of stoners and retired to his room to spark up. Everybody was having a good time, but people started getting paranoid. Every time there was a ring at the doorbell, everybody scrambled to hide their drinks and the sub-21 kids hid themselves in the closets and showers. Fucking hilarious.

I had damn near worked up the courage to ask Jules out on an actual date when the first glass was broken. We looked up and saw Junior panicking in the kitchen. "What happened bro?" I asked.

"Sorry, man. I broke your glasssssssss." Doug slurred.

"Are you all right?" I asked as I saw the bottle he was holding in his other hand. It was Everclear, and there wasn't very much left in the bottle. "Dude, you didn't drink that whole bottle did you?"

"Yeah man. It tastes like shit, but I can't stop drinking it. THIS PARTY IS GONNA PUT US ON THE MAP DUDE! WHOOOOOOOO!" He was starting to lose it.

"Bro, that's like pure grain alcohol. I don't think you are supposed to drink that much of it (or any of it for that matter), especially straight up." I don't think he knew what he was doing. But hell, he was a fresh-faced nineteen-year-old kid. I was there once. "Just settle down a bit." I suggested.

Things got progressively louder and more out of control. Everybody was having a good time. I made the rounds, being a gracious host by saying "hey" to everybody in my ridiculous smoking jacket and leopard print cowboy hat. I looked like I was half-crazy. I'd finally made it back to Jules when there was a loud knock on the door. "Campus Police! Open Up!" Everybody scrambled to hide their shit or themselves as I looked through the peephole. Sonofabitch. It was Squirrel fucking with us. He actually was a campus police officer, but he was off duty and ready to party. Sometimes it's good to have friends in high places.

Things had reached a crescendo when there was another crash of breaking glass. This time it was from the living room. And once again, Junior was the cause. Only this time he was half hanging out of one of the windows! Little Nick, who was some kind of everywhere-at-once super-hero that evening, yanked him back inside. The booze had taken the kid over. Thankfully, I knew a couple of the maintenance guys on campus, and that hinge looked mighty rusty, so we were able to eventually go around the dean to get it fixed. Thank god for the lowest bidder. Poor Elizabeth, both overwhelmed and upset ran out of the apartment in a huff with Jules and Alice in tow. On her way out the door Jules gave me the "call-me" signal. So I had that going for me, which was nice. But I was definitely in a sour mood as Little Nick and I carried a now passed out Junior down the hallway and tossed him onto his bed.

Around 3:00 AM, things finally fizzled out. People started heading home. Thankfully, they all seemed to have had a good time. I checked up on The Nate and helped him to his room with the trusty coffee can. He would have a three-day hangover. Little Nick and I commenced to cleanup duty. At 3:30 Heather and Shauna slipped out of Big Nick's room, giggling, and took off. Big Nick poked his head out the door, rubbed his eyes, looked at the carnage, laughed and shut his door. Little Nick and I finished cleaning up the broken glass, empty beer bottles and plastic cups. He went home soon after, leaving me and the bottle of Champ-an-ya that I had hoped to be sharing with my new lady-friend alone in my room. I popped the cork, took a giant swig and passed out. This was a sad attempt at seduction gone horribly awry.

The next day I woke up and made myself a bowl of fruit-loops. As I walked into my room a girl busted out of my wardrobe, apologizing profusely holding her head. Evidently she had gone in there to hide when there was a knock on the door and had fallen asleep. I shooed her out of the apartment and turned around to find Junior and The Nate sitting on the living room chairs with identical "death-warmed-over" looks to them. "Rough night, fellas?" I asked. Neither of them remembered anything from the night before. They looked at the busted window and then at me. "Last night put us on the map." I said to them as I cruised back to my room for breakfast.

EPILOGUE:

Well, the administration found out about us. Not from our odd request for a new window, but from an upset Elizabeth mentioning the party in conversation to the wrong people. I reckon we were on "double secret probation" for the rest of the semester. I finally worked up the stones to ask Jules out, and we went to a hockey game for our first real date. This kicked off my first real relationship in college. Good times! Junior and Elizabeth never did hit it off, although he did take a run at The Hottie RA, later in the semester. That night however resulted in us having more friends than we knew what to do with for the rest of the year. The Super Bowl party a few weeks later went swimmingly, and the motley crew of Room 302 became sort of the unofficial leaders of the campus community.

Blackout Summer In The USA - Another Dorm-Days Flashback

This week's Dorm Days Flashback takes us all the way back to the Summer of 2001. At the time I was working at a little golf course on the west side of Salt Lick known as Rose Park. Oddly enough, a month ago, I just started a new job at that familiar little golf course on the west side of Salt Lick known as Rose Park. Like a lot of things in my life, it seems like I take a long and arduous journey just to get back to where I started. But like I always say, it doesn't matter what happens to me as long as I get a story out of it. The story of how I just ended up back at Rose Park will be told at a different time, but to tide you over until then, here's a twisted look back to my first summer away from home.

"Blackout Summer In The USA"
(June 2001)
Originally posted to the old blog in February 2006

It was the summer of 2001, and it was a scorcher. During the summer the only kids still living on campus were people enrolled at least full time, or worked a campus job for ten hours per week. I had a job at a local golf course in Salt Lake, Rose Park, and really did not want to quit and return to Price for the summer. So I got Coach Connor to sign off on ten hours per week as a personal assistant to his staff, and got to stay on campus. VodkaRob, in a similar situation, didn’t feel like returning to his small hometown as well, so he kept his campus job. Without school and less responsibility than ever, could VodkaRob and I, the remaining members of Room 302, manage not to party ourselves to death over the summer? Could we avoid pissing off the administration and getting kicked out? Would we make some new friends? These are all questions hanging over our heads as we cruised into my favorite season of the year.

The administration’s solution, at least to the second question, was to split us up. They wanted to “keep an eye” on all of us summer stragglers, so they confined every on-campus resident to a new building, Residence Hall 4. VodkaRob and I drew different apartments on the ground floor of the new building, and each had five new roommates to get acquainted with. Rob, on the basis of his prior military affiliation ended up with a rowdy bunch of Naval ROTC kids. I ended up with a crew of hard partying, occasionally womanizing members of our Griffin Soccer team. I really can’t stand soccer, but these guys were pretty cool. And considering they were touring the country with various clubs and attending camps and clinics, I pretty much had the apartment to myself, which was a strange place in itself.

I ended up in the ADA compliant room. This meant that the cupboards and appliances in the kitchen were lower as were the sinks in bathroom. For the first time since I quit getting taller at age 13, I actually felt tall! But the best part of all was the bench in the shower, and detachable massaging shower-head. As sore as I’d be when I’d either return home from a golf tournament or unable to stay on two feet due to a few too many, at least I could relax a little bit getting cleaned up.

After returning home from a hard day at work with darkness falling over the city, happy hour would begin, and Residence Hall 4 would spring to life, people starting their own engines, getting ready to hit the town, or tying one on at home. VodkaRob and I along with whoever wanted to join us would load up a little mini cooler with various alcoholic beverages and hold court on a picnic table out in the main quad. While liquor was allowed in the dorms, it was pretty taboo to have it outside of the rooms. But this restraint was either lifted or overlooked that summer. It was like a little outdoor version of Cheers every night, as our group would shoot the shit and relax in the cooling evening air. Once in awhile we would drag out the electric guitars and do our best GN’R impression out there to the delight of no one in particular. Maybe that is what retirement will be like.

It was on one particular Wednesday night that our story takes place. I was deep in preparation for one last run at qualifying for the Utah State Amateur Golf Championship. The qualifier that particular year happened to be in my hometown of Price, so I was prepared to leave nothing to chance as far as getting in. I’d been practicing for hours a day the few weeks prior, before and after work, during my lunch break, hell, I’d even tap two foot putts in the hallway for an hour every night before I went to bed. I was ready, and that particular Wednesday I’d played in my final competitive tune-up, in an 8-man team match for Rose Park against our hated rivals from Mountain View at their home course. I fired a 3-under par 69 on my way to thoroughly destroying my opponent, the son of a Senior PGA Tour star going six holes up with five to play. I needed to unwind before I left town for one last day of preparation down home in Price.

I returned to the school at approximately 9:00 pm that evening. Now, the all new Residence Hall 5 was currently under construction on top of our usual parking lot, so we had to park all the way on the other end of campus. As soon as I got out of my truck I heard the concussive BOOM of an explosion in the distance and started hearing sirens. “Jesus, that sounds like its right in the neighborhood” I thought to myself, not noticing that the normally brilliantly lit up campus was much darker than normal. I grabbed my gear and started trekking across the school grounds. When I reached the dorm quad to find that the fellas had already started happy hour without me.

“A substation bit the dust homey! The power is out dude.” Mikey Hip-hop, a lanky, blond haired, blue eyed kid in a FUBU shirt, and one of VodkaRob’s new roommates hollered my way as I crossed the bridge with my golf bag. “It doesn't look like you boys are jammin’ tonight.”

“I guess not,” I said sorely, “Rob, you got any vodka?”

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?” He replied. I stowed my gear into my room, lit a couple of peach candles and hit the shower to pound a can of Fosters to warm up. It was time to unwind; we were getting seriously tanked tonight, in the dark.

I grabbed two of my commemorative Westminster College glasses, a quart of half and half, my bottle of Kahlua Especial, and a flashlight and picked my way through the dark down to VodkaRob’s apartment. I was currently in my The Big Lebowski, white Russian phase. But as usual I overdid everything. I preferred my stuff in a big glass. Mixing drinks in the dark is no small task, and these were pretty damn stout. We went back outside where pretty much the entire dorm was hanging out on the grass around the fire-pit. Somebody brought out a battery powered tape player and we had a little impromptu party in the dark.

After about two hours and several trips back into the dorm for refills (couldn’t let the milk spoil!), we heard the muffled sound of the generators kick back on and the lights flickered back on dimly. As I stood up, it hit me. My eyes blurred, and my legs felt like spaghetti. I looked at VodkaRob and slurred, “Man, I’m fucked=up. But I haven’t had more than I usually have.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, all I had was Stolichnaya 120. It’s a little more powerful than Skyy.” VodkaRob said matter-of-factly as he downed the remainder of his whiskey sour.

“Great.” I thought as a bunch of us made our way down to Team Navy’s apartment. Rico, another one of VodkaRob’s roommates opened the door.

“Dudes, check it out, my buddy sent me some funny videos!” he said as he giddily dropped a DVD into the player in the main area of the apartment. This kid evidently was some kind of porno connoisseur, as about six of us dudes and three girls were treated to this sick bastard’s new favorite title, “Gag-Factor 8.” The women featured in this particularly degrading, yet humorously titled piece of verite’ seemingly enjoyed fellatio so much they would vomit during the process. Fucking heinous. But most of us were so destroyed that we just kind of stared blankly. The room started to spin, and I excused myself to use the john.

When I returned Rico and his collection had disappeared, and all that were left were VodkaRob, Mikey Hip-hop, and a couple of other guys named Chad and Jeff were talking with the lone remaining female in the room, some gal with frizzy blonde hair named Monique. “Sorry fellas, I think I passed out in there.” I said as I noticed that about a half hour had passed since I went in. I had blacked out.

“S’cool homey! We was just discussin’ some fly art yo!” Mikey Hip-hop shouted, maybe a little too loud as I snagged a beer and sat in the big chair.

“Oh really,” I said, suddenly interested in something besides finding the bottom of my bottle. I do enjoy art very much, especially the really weird shit like Van Gogh, Basquiat, The Dali’ and Picasso. Someday I want to be able to afford some good paintings, not only can they be an interesting conversation piece, but it’s one hell of an investment as well. Monique talked about some of the stuff she had done, and it sounded like it was up my alley. She specialized in canvas paintings with different materials other than paint. “Like what?” I asked. Hey, inquiring minds wanted to know.

“Oh, foods, cleaning supplies, biologicals.” She said.

“Biologicals?” VodkaRob inquired.

“Yeah, plant, animal, and human fluids. It’s been especially difficult getting approval for my latest project.”

“Which is?” I asked, my curiosity peaked.

“It’s a commentary on the misogyny of college age men and their attitudes toward any artistic expression of powerful females inside of the artistic medium.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Chad asked.

“Well, in layman’s terms, I’ve painted a female figure, and I’m going to get five college guys to ejaculate on the canvas and shine it under a black light.”

As completely obliterated as I was, it actually seemed like a sensible idea to me until I looked over and saw the horrified look on VodkaRob’s face. And then it hit me. There are five of us dudes in here right now; I think this crazy woman is propositioning us. When Hip-hop enthusiastically volunteered to do it, I knew it was a bad idea. “What the fuck are you thinking?” I asked myself, and then the room started to spin again. Time to bail. “Sorry folks, I’ve got a long drive tomorrow morning, it’s time for me to retire.” I like weird shit, but not that fucking weird.

I walked back down the main hallway to my apartment, and paused about halfway through and took a knee to gather myself. “Nickas, This shit is getting beyond out of control You better lock it up before you do something really dumb that will ruin your already less-than-stellar reputation.” I thought to myself as I willed myself the rest of the way down the hallway. I managed to choke down two large glasses of water without throwing up to lessen the hangover, and hit the sheets.

The trip home the next day was mostly uneventful; I had a tremendous headache and played like shit during my practice round. I shot a 7-over par 77 on the course I’d played hundreds of times as a kid. My dad and I went down to his old bar, the Savoy, for a beer after dinner. “You all right?” he asked, “you looked like shit out there today.”

“Dad, I think I’ve been living a little too hard lately. I’ve got to reel myself in a little bit,” I said, reluctant to get into specifics.

“You’re not doing any drugs or anything, are you?” he asked.

“No, but I have been drinking a little too much lately. It’s not messing with my job or the way I’m playing or anything, but I can see how things might get out of control if I don’t rein it in.” Unbeknown to my dad, I’d gone through a phase in my mid teens where I kinda lost it, and it seriously messed my grades as well as some relationships with family and friends. It took a lot of hard work in the years since to get things back under control and become the real Nickas again. “I just don’t want to do anything stupid.”

“Well, do what you have to do. You know what you want out of life, if it doesn’t happen, the only one you have to blame is yourself. Just don’t let it bother your schoolwork when that starts again, or then I have a problem too.” Things may not have turned out the way he imagined in his life, but as far as life smarts go, my old man is freaking Einstein. He did not say anything I did not already know, but just hearing it from somebody who had been there in his own past made me feel a lot better.

The next day I did not play especially spectacular. My grandparents and great aunt came out to watch my first few holes, the first time they had ever seen me play competitively. I stayed steady enough until the 18^th hole but I didn’t think it was going to be good enough to qualify, when one of the tournament officials asked each of us in our group where we sat. “I’m at 3-over right now,” I replied.

“Mr. Nickas, it would do you some good to get a birdie on this last hole.”

“Well, thanks for that. No pressure or anything.” I thought to myself as I stepped to the tee and crushed the piss out the ball, but pulled it a little left. It looked like it was about fifteen yards left of the green, but in the rough on the short, par 4. Everybody else in the group had laid-up off the tee with iron shots, meaning they played their approaches first. This gave me a little extra time to think over my own shot, a pitch out of a semi-buried lie in the tall grass. “Shot of your life dude,” I thought to myself as I drew the club back. The ball felt good coming off the club, it landed about halfway to the hole on the green and rolled smoothly over the ridge to the back pin location settling about twenty-four inches from the cup. I made the longest two footer of my entire life, and managed to qualify for the State Amateur by a single shot. Despite all of my problems, I had managed to become one of the 75 best amateur players in the state.

Qualifying for that tournament gave me something new to focus on. VodkaRob went to Oregon for a couple of weeks to see his lady-friend, which afforded me the chance to take a little break. Not that it was his fault or anything, it was all on me, but I had the chance to sink my mind back into my work and my game. That’s not to say we gave up the good times completely, but it never got to the point where I considered spunking on a painter’s canvas a reasonable idea ever again.

Crazy Pete Gets The Girl - Another Dorm Days Flashback!

Hey chickapees, how are ya? I hope you're enjoying the tour through my days of yore. I promise to have an original piece that's tentatively titled "The Ballad of the UGC" up by the end of this weekend. Tomorrow is probably going to be my last shift at my current job up at the University of Utah, and I'm pretty sure I won't have much to do except to craft a story in dedication to the rich tapestry that was golf at the "U." So be on the lookout for that. Anyway, tonights bawdy tale flashes back to February of 2001. There's a few new characters in this one. I dole out a little relationship advice, which in itself is hilarious. God knows, I don't think I've had a relationship last longer than twenty minutes in the last ten years. But I did listen to Loveline every night, so that means I'm qualified, right? Also, make sure you read through to the end for a little bonus video action featuring a few appearances by the characters in this story, just so you won't think I'm making this all up. And away we go:

"Crazy Pete Gets The Girl"
(February 2001)

It was in late February of year 2 in Room 302 and all of us were finally gelling as roommates. Earlier in the year, The Nate, Big Nick and I were pretty stunned when Junior and The Dave did not return, but the new guys VodkaRob, Jose' and Crazy Pete fit in with our fairly messed up personalities quite nicely. We were actually going to make it a full year without somebody giving up on us! Unfortunately, The Nate was becoming increasingly withdrawn, taking part in our weekend binges less and less frequently. Apparently something about Pete and Jose' rubbed him the wrong way. But none of us could figure out what. Kind of a shame, he missed out on quite a few good times down the stretch that year, even some not so good, and some that were both like the subject of the story today.

It was your typical Friday at Westminster. The best kept secret of that school is the vast majority of classes ran from Monday to Thursday with very few classes on Fridays. So if you played your cards right, it was almost like a three-day weekend every week! It was perfect for nursing a Post-"Margarita Thursday" hangover. And man-oh-man; I was feeling it that day. But hell, it was worth it, because tonight was the school's Mardi Gras celebration as well as the beginning of Spring Break.

We also just happened to be one day away from tickets to the AC/DC Stiff Upper Lip Tour going on sale. If you did not live in the Salt Lake area, you probably would not know just how big of a deal that was back then. After an incident with a fan getting trampled during a Razor's Edge Tour show a decade before, the band had not scheduled a tour stop in Salt Lake since. So Crazy Pete, VodkaRob, Jose' and myself were especially stoked to see those legends grace the stage once again in our neck of the woods. Crazy Pete seemed especially excited for the show, but he had been growing increasingly anxious about something else.

There was this certain female classmate of his that, in his words gave him that familiar "climbing the rope in gym class" kind of feeling. The dude was smitten with her. One problem though, she was afflicted with what was known in the Latin as "Boyfriendus-Douchebaggus." You know, she was with the wrong guy. Crazy Pete was the right guy. And since I was in the midst of a not-so-ideal situation myself with Golf-Girl, it was one of the few things Crazy Pete and I found some common ground on. Women were the subject of many of our beer drinking sessions.

Anyway, I had finally got home from an all-afternoon session in my office down at the gym assisting with breaking down tapes on UM-Western for the basketball game the next day. I stopped in the kitchen to pour a shot, grabbed a Michelob out of the fridge and cruised down the hallway to my room. Crazy Pete stopped me in the hallway. "Nickas! Dude! Candace finally broke up with that prick!"

"That's great! How'd you find out, brah?" I asked.

"Well, we were in this study group this afternoon and she told me while we were planning out the work on our class project," He replied.

"Sweet! So she went out of her way to tell you?"

"Yeah," he said, "I thought it was kind of weird."

Now, one thing that I am not very good at is catching a hint, especially from girls. Hell, the writing was on the wall between Jules and I before school even started, but that did not stop me from feeling pretty blindsided three weeks into the year when the hammer finally dropped. And after I took her to see Def Leppard too! But this situation right here seemed obvious as hell to me. "Dude, you have to call her. She wouldn't have told you about her breakup if she didn't dig ya!"

"I don't think she wants me too." He said sheepishly.

"Bullshit man! This is your chance! Call her right now!" I had no idea if that was a good idea or not. Sadly, my biggest problem over the years when it came to women was inaction. I never made the call at the right time if I ever made the call at all. "Dude, make something up, invite her over to work on your project or something." Why the hell was he listening to me?

"I don't know man." He started to wear down.

So I went over and picked up his phone, looked at her number pinned to his bulletin board and started to dial. "Pete, I have fucked up way way way way way too many times. If I let you walk away from this I won't be able to live with myself." The alcohol was definitely talking there. I got to damn near the last digit when he grabbed the receiver out of my hand.

"All right, man, I'll do it." Crazy Pete hit the last button on the phone and pulled his best Optimus Prime impression by transforming into fucking Mr. Suave! He made a little small talk and invited her over to work on their project and hang out that night. It fucking worked! Even I was surprised!

"Are you going to take her to Mardi Gras tonight?" I asked. "I think Jose' and I are going to cruise down there in a couple of hours or so."

"We'll probably just work on the project and hang out." And then he said the magic words: "We'll see what happens."

I snagged a giant can of Fosters out of the fridge to drink in the shower, entered the bathroom and flipped on everybody's favorite rock and roll institution KBER 101. Motley Crue into Metallica into AC/DC into White Zombie into Def Leppard into Godsmack; is it any wonder why I love that station as much as I do? By the end of my shower I felt good and loose. I loves me a long hot shower with a little alcohol. Anyway, I hopped across the hall to my bedroom and got dressed in the nicest pair of cargo pants and the cheesiest looking Hawaiian shirt I could find. I went with the Hilfiger with the Woody cars on it. Real subtle. It was time to get festive! I entered the kitchen/living room area to find a bunch of girls from that room down the hall and VodkaRob pounding down some cocktails.

As I was joining in the festivities, I heard Crazy Pete knocking on The Nate's door. "Can I borrow some tequila, man?" he asked. The Nate shot him down. Things were starting to get a little uncool with old Nate, but at the same time, he had a $50 bottle of Herradura he did not want going to waste. So I kind of understood. Fortunately I had a huge bottle of Cuervo in my stash that I was more than happy to part with for a good cause, and this certainly qualified as a good cause. "What are you mixing up bro?" I asked.

"I thought we'd just do some shots or something."

"Well Pete, I'll tell you what, use as much of that bottle that you want, but if Candace isn't up for tequila, you can use whatever of my stuff you want, except for the Goose. That shit is expensive!"

VodkaRob and the girls from down the hall soon vanished, leaving just myself, Crazy Pete and Jose' playing some Tony Hawk II on our little television. Big Nick and Ali were in his room "taking a nap" which usually involved a lot of slapping noises and laughing. The Nate and his girl Lisa had locked themselves up in his room and were pounding something against the wall, probably each other. Good times! It was about 10:00 when we heard a knock at the door. In his excitement, Crazy Pete nearly busted his ass tripping on a stool while running to the door. In walked Candace who seemed just a little too made-up to be coming over to work on a class project. This was a slam dunk for the Pete-ster! As Col. Hannibal Smith of The A-Team once said, "I love it when a plan comes together!" They went down the hall to VodkaRob's room to use his computer while Jose' and I had a shot and caught our ride down to Mardi Gras.

One thing Westminster always got right was the parties they threw. As opposed to the student events thrown down at the College of Eastern Utah, these were typically wild-assed soirees where the liquor flowed, the tuneage thumped and everyone was dressed to the nines. I'll get a little more in-depth about those parties in a future story. They were a doozy!

We got down there around 10:15, met up with Peeze, Dane-o, and The Line-Stepper and commenced to having a couple drinks, limbo-ing and having a good time. I didn't intend on staying too long just because we had to get up early the next day to stand in line for the tickets. The years of self abuse had taken their toll by then and I just could'nt hang anymore. So I bailed around 11:15, catching a ride with Rachel, one of my teammates from the golf team.

I got back to 302 to find some of the girls from down the hall digging through the cupboards in the kitchen. "Where do you keep your bread?!" one of them yelled at me.

"What bread?" I slurred, my head already starting to pound. "What in the blue hell is going on?"

"She's in there throwing-up!" She hollered.

So I headed back up the hallway towards my room and I heard the moaning and retching noises coming out of the open bathroom door. I saw a trail of vomit leading from the door to the john as two more of the girls from down the hallway nearly ran me over. "Where are your paper towels?!"

"Paper towels? They're in the pantry." I answered. Why the fuck were they yelling at me? I looked in Crazy Pete's room. He was lying down on his bed, the faint odor of tequila and hurl was in the air. I looked on his desk, the entire fifth of Cuervo was reduced to about 3/4 of an inch in the bottom of the bottle. I had to look at the clock twice. 11:30. Yup, only an hour and fifteen minutes had passed since Candace had arrived. Zero to puking in an hour! "That's got to be some kind of a record!" I thought. "Pete, are you all right?" I asked shaking him back into the land of the living.

"Oh fuck dude, give me a minute." He moaned.

I figured things would get a little messy so I went into my room, flipped on Scott Ian's "Rock Show" on VH1 and changed out of my good clothes tossing on a pair of basketball shorts and my Megadeth t-shirt. Whitesnake's Still of the Night video kicked on as I decided it was time to take over. I retreated to the kitchen, filled a glass of water and went back down the hallway. I went into the bathroom where poor Candace was praying to the porcelain god. "Hey. Are you gonna be all right kiddo?" She looked up, the sweat and tears making the mascara bleed down her face, giving her the vague appearance of Alice Cooper in the early years. "Here, sip some of this, real slowly." I handed her the glass, trying to not look completely horrified. "It's just some cool water." Crazy Pete shuffled in. "Grab a washcloth out of the drawer, and soak it in some cool, but not cold water," I hollered at him.

"You asshole." He hissed as he handed me the washcloth.

I handed it to her, "Here, wash your face off a little bit and hold it against your forehead." I turned my attention to Pete, "Why am I the asshole?"

"If you hadn't have made me call her, this never would have happened. This is all YOUR fault, man!" He wasn't making any sense. In my previous days I probably would have let him have it, but my many years of experiencing consistently fucked up situations had tempered me. He was obviously still pretty drunk. Anything I said probably would have made the whole situation worse. But Christ, what the hell happened in that hour? And where the hell was VodkaRob? He better be having some fun. In my best Winston Wolf from Pulp Fiction impression I looked Crazy Pete dead in the eye and very calmly laid it out.

"Pete, we'll talk about this in the morning. Right now, we've got a sick girl on our hands that we need to take care of. And considering both you and VodkaRob are still underage, if we draw the attention of the RA or the Dean we are ALL fucked. So sober your ass up right now and help out. Go and empty out one of my cans of coffee." Evidently my great aunts, bless their little old hearts thought I drank twenty cups of coffee a day. So every time I went home to Price they'd send a giant-ass can of Folgers up with me.

Pete shuffled down into the kitchen and I got poor Candace another glass of water and a multi-vitamin. I walked past my room to see one of the girls from down the hall in there looking at my music collection. "Something I can do for ya?" I asked. She looked up, blank look on her face, "I like the heavy stuff too. Are you into Creed and Vertical Horizon?" she asked. My eyes rolled, this was definitely a conversation I did not need to have right now.

"Uhhh, not now," I said more annoyed than anything as I grabbed my extra blanket and pillow out of my closet and tossed them on the couch. "Okay Pete, I'm going to need some help right now dude. She threw up her shoes a minute ago so I think she's done yakking, let's have her lie down. We need to move her out to the couch." Pete and I carried her out, layed her down on the couch, propped up her head and threw a blanket on her. The girls from down the hall finally left and I grabbed a Dewzer out of the fridge. Pete sat down on the big chair and hung his head. "Pete, you did a good job tonight. I'm proud of ya. The two of you are going to be all right, man." I said.

"I think I love this girl." He slurred. "What went wrong?"

"Cheer up dude, you've still got a chance. One bad night isn't going to kill ya's. You saw how she was dressed when she came in, it's pretty damn obvious that she digs you." I continued, "Just take it a little bit slower next time, Dude." Silence. "Pete? Hey, bro?" I looked up at him. He had his head in his hands and was passed out snoring. I threw a blanket over his shoulders, turned out the living room light, and grabbed a mop. He was probably right, it was all my fault. I guess I deserved cleanup duty.

Metallica's Motorbreath jolted me out of bed at 7:30 the next day. Thankfully the headache was gone. I jumped in the shower, cleaned up and got dressed. Tickets went on sale promptly at 9:00 AM so we had to bust ass down to the store. As I walked out, the living room area was deserted. No sign of Crazy Pete or Candace. VodkaRob popped his head out his door, looking a little worse for wear. "Hang on, let me put on some pants and I'll go with you." He said groggily.

"Take your time. Just meet me out at the Blazer." I said walking out the door.

Rob walked up to the truck looking disheveled to say the least. "Rough night?" I asked.

"You don't want to know?" he replied.

We met Jose' and another buddy of mine, Little Nick, down at the grocery store and waited patiently for the ticket lottery. In walked Crazy Pete about twenty minutes later. "What a trooper bro! You're alive!" I exclaimed. "Why aren't you in bed dude? Rob and I could have handled this."

"I had to be here man. AC/DC." he replied, horns up.

"How much of your project did you get done?" Rob asked.

"Not a whole lot. That chick is nuts. I can't remember too much."

That's probably a good thing.

Epilogue:

We ended up getting awesome seats for AC/DC, right on the floor. I even scored a hottie rocker-chick, Jess, from the dorm for a date. This was a first for me for a big rock concert. Before the show, we shot a little video in the parking lot that planted the seed in VodkaRob, Jose' and I for a little project we're coming out with in a few months. VodkaRob started an on-again/off again relationship with one of the girls down the hall. And as for Crazy Pete, well, Crazy Pete got the girl. Pete and Candace got an "A" on their project and dated well into the following summer. She became yet another one of the crazy characters woven into the tapestry of the Room 302, the Penthouse of Residence Hall 3. Score one for the good guys.

Bonus:

Here's a rough cut of the video we shot in the E-Center parking lot before the tremenduous AC/DC Stiff Upper Lip show. Hope ya'll like it!