I’m trying to make a point to blog about books i’ve read, so here goes….
Over the weekend i read “The Real Animal House” by Chris Miller. He’s the same guy who co-wrote the movie Animal House which went on to be come the largest grossing comedy of all time. Chris also went to dartmouth (like me) and was a brother in the Alpha Delta fraternity (like me).
The book was interesting for two main reasons:
First, it was really interesting to see what college life was like in the early 1960’s because of the emergence of rock n’ roll and the absence and importing of women at/to the school. Chris was really into rock and roll, which was new on the scene. Rock and roll at the time was played exclusively by African Americans and was not universally listened to. When rushing a frat, he remarked that most of the frats didn’t even know about Rock at all. AD back then fully embraced it and most of his stories either revolved around the music or at least discussed what what music was playing. The management of women at colleges in the 60’s is amazing. Women would train up to dartmouth for a weekend and be paired with a date for the entire time which would transform the entire campus. For the guys, it was like going on a 2-3 day blind date. As someone who’s been on a bunch of blind dates, i can see how this would be painful (both for the men and the women) and could lead to some social madness. I can also see why there was so much alcohol involved. Further discussion with my parents about this time has shown that travelling to schools and finding the right guy/girl was one of the main mechanisms provided at the time to find a suitable husband. Keep in mind that no sex before marriage was believed to be normal and there weren’t many options for birth control. After reading this, i’m very happy that i came through 40 years later when women were on campus and many of the dating conventions have been changed.
Continue reading “The Real Animal House”
I recently found a little gem on XM radio. Every week, for an hour, 
Living in DC, we get our fair share of circles to drive around. On many of them there are statues of war heros. I rarely check out who they are and what they did, but ever since i read this little fact i’ve been much more interested:
ed him to win the critical Battle of Chattanooga in 1863. Grant put him in charge of cavalry for the Army of the Potomac in 1864 and he led the raid on Richmond that ended in the death of Confederate general Jeb Stuart. He became commander of the Army of the Potomac in 1864. In this capacity he led the army to battle at Appomattox and, with Grant, compelled Gen. Robert E. Lee to surrender, ending the Civil War. In 1884, he succeeded Sherman as commander in chief of the Army. Not too shabby.
I played with Methembe my freshman year at Dartmouth and beyond being one of the nicest guys ever, he was a truly amazing soccer player. Called as “the Mayor” on the field ever since his youth when he tore up the Zimbabwe youth league, he also become known as “Captain Hook” to Chris Pedrick and others who liked to watch. I never forget when Methembe rolled into preseason my freshman year and was marking me on defense. He pretty much dominated my every move and walking off the field one of the players mentioned to me that Methembe was a few days late to preseason because he was playing the World Cup qualifiers against Nigeria and i should be too upset that he crushed me on the field b/c just a few days later he was marking Amochaci and Kanu. Yeah, that’s quite a switch – world cup qualifier to Ivy League preseason. Anyway, i bring all this up b/c i wanted to post the latest of Methembe’s accomplishments in Zimbabwe and with Grass Roots Soccer which is a great program:
of community service dorm. As I wandered about taking pictures, a student approached and asked politely, “Excuse me, who are you?” Instinctively, I turned around and yelled menacingly, “Who the f*ck are YOU?” The girl scurried off, but the incident made me introspective. Here I am, twenty-seven-years old, with a relatively successful career, regular car insurance payments, and pillowcases that match my comforter. Yet at the same time, I can’t drink one beer without drinking twenty, I can’t converse with a girl without trying to take her home, and I can’t even step foot in a fraternity house without immediately regressing into an asshole. While college is many years behind me, vestiges of the experience remain deeply ingrained in my personality. Welcome to the world of a recovering frat guy.
only to the naked eye. Take my friend Mike, a successful software developer in New York whose downtown apartment has actually been passed down for years to successive generations of graduates from his fraternity like an off-campus party house. Or my buddy Justin, a writer here in LA who is looking to move to a new place – but has yet to find one big enough to fit hisbeer pong table. Unfortunately for him, “Hardwood floor quickly soaks up cheap beer” is generally not an amenity typically found on craigslist.
rock artists on the planet. Then they broke up. And at that point, rock split into two opposing ideologies; there were now two kinds of music. The prime directive of the first kind of rock was to be meaningful and important; the prime directive of the second was to entertain people and move product. The first category comprises elements (Springsteen, punk rock, early U2, Chris Carrabba, etc.) that followed a template built by Dylan in the 1960’s. The second category comprises things (Elton John, Disco, everything the Stones did post-Some Girls, Michael Jackson et. al.) that followed the path KISS chose when they formed in 1973. Their era includes 2 exceptions, which are Led Zepplin and Prince; everything else fits into either category A or B. And that is the entire history of rock music.