Tales from the Lost Semester - Volume 8

The Greatest

College life brings with it an abundance of leisure time. The typical college freshmen spends approximately 3-4 hours in class per day and another 2-3 doing homework and studying, leaving them with plenty of time on their hands to do important things like eat healthy meals, exercise regularly, get involved with student government, and volunteer in the community. After all is said and done, this typical college freshman might even have a few hours left over that week to meet some friends for a pizza, some soda, and some meaningful conversation about the exciting future that lies ahead.

Of course, I was not your typical college freshman. And given that this was the vision of college as described to myself and others by my high school guidance counselor, I suspect that those that fit the mold were far outnumbered by misfits like yours truly. Let’s break it down, shall we?

• Class: That depends – what’s the attendance policy again?

• Homework and studying: Sorry, I’m in the middle of a game of Nintendo Wrestling - when you’ve got an epic match on your hands like The Amazon vs. King Korn Karn, who has time for studying?

• Healthy meals: Unless you’d consider Matt the Cook's specialty meal of crab legs and shitty cheese pizza healthy, then no.

• Exercise: Do 200 forced pushups after midnight on a weeknight count?

• Extracurricular activities: Huh?

• Pizza and soda: Well, yes lots of pizza, and if by soda you mean beer, then yes on that one.

• Meaningful conversation: Sure, we had some of those – “Who’s packing that bowl?” “What time are we going out?” “Don’t take my fucking seat.” “Are we seriously out of pot already?”

Yes, the world was our oyster; the problem was that no one had the gumption to shuck that son of a bitch.

As one can plainly see, my friends and I often found ourselves with oodles of leisure time on our hands during the Lost Semester. Most of us had an affinity for skipping class, none of us were training for a triathlon, and we all enjoyed a good evening of not studying. However, as strange as this may sound, there were those times when merely sitting around, getting stoned and watching two of our friends play each other in Super Tecmo Bowl while listening to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here just didn’t meet our demanding entertainment requirements. Sure, we had the TV to fall back on, but being that this was 1993 there were only 35 channels or so that we could tune to for a satisfactory diversion (I know, it’s almost inconceivable), and most of it was crap (some things never change). Thankfully, Room 23 was equipped with a fully functional VCR, so on those evenings when regular TV and video games weren’t doing it for us we could pop in a movie and have something other than actual schoolwork to focus on, at least for a few hours.

The trouble was that while one of us Room 23 dwellers had the foresight to bring a VCR to school with us, we neglected to also make sure we had plenty of movies and/or other shows we’d actually want to watch in tow – what’s the sense in that, right? That meant that if we decided to gather together for a viewing, we’d need to find something worth watching before settling in. However, this concept required a sharp mind and some critical thinking, and given that our brains were all rendered a tad cloudy by the constant pot smoking we did, it should come as no surprise to the reader that one fine evening, when the mood to be entertained struck (i.e. we were all pretty fried), my friends and I were left sitting around Room 23 with absolutely nothing to watch. A clear-thinking group of people would likely have come up with a logical plan like, “let’s go ask someone else in the house if they have anything to watch” or “why don’t we decide what we want to watch and have a few of us go to the video store and rent it?” Again, we failed in this department.

I’m not sure whose brilliant idea this was, but we finally decided that we would select one individual (using the “Who Gets the Green Hit?” methodology) who would then be responsible for walking 7 blocks (one way) by themselves to campus video store That’s Rentertainment to pick out a movie that the whole group could enjoy. The tension mounted as we prepared to assign this unpleasant task out to the group – who would be the pariah of the herd, forced into the cold, dark night to forage for entertainment? Would the selection meet the lofty standards of this discerning group of individuals? Would the person selected be so stoned that they’d forget the way to the video store? Needless to say, I was nervous. We all threw out our odds or evens and tallied up the total. Then, CS started at a previously agreed upon point and counted off around the room. Who would be saddled with this most perilous assignment? The anxiety in the room was palatable. After what seemed like an eternity, the final count passed me, passed CS, passed Reggie, passed Phelps, passed Pops...and landed squarely on Sadahara.

As the rest of the group let out a collective sigh, Sadahara, taking his medicine like a man, shook off the cobwebs, pulled himself up, collected a few bucks from the group and set out on his journey. It seems strange to this day that not one of us volunteered to go with Sadahara – I guess being stoned in a warm house/comfortable seat will do that to you. As we waited for whatever treasure of a film Sadahara selected for us, it was business as usual in Room 23 – Nintendo, tunes, Aquapipe, some food. I think half of us were somewhat confused when Sadahara came back to the room what seemed like 2 hours later – either he had agonized long and hard over just which movie to pick up for us or our concept of time was distorted by the mind-altering substances. But no matter – it was movie time. I’m not sure what each one of us was expecting, but I can sure as hell guarantee you that none of us guessed that we would soon bear witness to...The Greatest.

Given recent developments in our contemporary world of entertainment, I suspect that many of the nine of you reading this right now have heard of the Will Smith vehicle Ali, in which the rapper-turned-actor portrays Muhammad Ali, depicting his struggles, the rise of his boxing career, the demons he battled throughout his life, and so on. And I’m sure you also realize that in 1977, Muhammad Ali starred as himself in the biopic (or is it “autobiopic”?) The Greatest. Oh, you didn’t know this? Well, neither did any of us until Sadahara strolled back into the room and proudly announced that this was indeed his selection. Now if it were me, I would have been extremely conservative and gone for something I knew would be well-received – perhaps The Running Man, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Dawson, Jim Brown and Jesse “The Body” Ventura at their collective best. But Sadahara was too brash, too bold for such a safe choice. He would only be satisfied if he came back with a movie that would knock our socks off, if only because of the sheer absurdity of it.

Absurdity does not adequately describe this film. It starts out with a younger actor (who most certainly is not Muhammad Ali) as the young Cassius Clay – one scene that stands out in my mind to this day is when Clay is working at a country club, gets called boy, and dodges the punches of some old white guy he dares to try and punch him as he bears a scowl that emanates 400 years of anger and oppression. Powerful and bold. Soon, Cassius has grown up, earned gold in Rome and is ready to begin his pro career – or so I think, as I had zoned out for a few minutes there. At this point, Ali steps in to portray himself – I’ve always loved when actors or personalities play themselves; it’s such a stretch. Anyway, we see Ali chasing after some white woman – a prostitute I believe – and as he is following her into a seedy motel, a black man in a plain black suit implores Ali to forget the white she-devil and instead join him at a meeting. For some reason, Ali lets the piece of tail go on her way and he follows this black man, much like a rat following the Pied Piper, into a small meeting hall, where none other than Malcolm X is speaking. Who plays Malcolm X? Why of course, it’s James Earl Jones! Ali sits with the focused, determined look of a man who’s trying not to overact, and he absorbs all of Malcolm X’s words about white folks not being all that great and such. He then basically stands up and says “now I am Muhammad Ali.”

At this point we are approximately 45 minutes into the movie, and to be honest, I don’t recall seeing one boxing scene as of yet. As you can imagine, the lot of us have grown impatient at watching The Greatest play The Greatest, and some of the group begins to unleash on Sadahara.

“What the hell is this shit?”

“This is all you could come up with?”

“Was ever single other movie out?”

Of course, nobody was taking into consideration the fact that Sadahara had just done a 14 block round trip by himself so that the rest of us could sit on our stoned asses and be entertained, so naturally he was a little miffed. “Fuck you guys – go pick the movie your damn selves next time!” As he stormed from the room to the group’s catcalls, I couldn’t help but wonder how Ali fared from that point on – naturally we had stopped the movie and never got through the rest of it (I’m fairly confident that we also incurred a late fee due to our general laziness). Did he remain loyal to the teachings of Malcolm X? Did he ever bed that white hooker? Did he ever actually box? So many unanswered questions, so little desire to find answers. Our That’s Rentertainment experiment having failed miserably, it was back to the status quo of tunes and Tecmo, and I suspect that the lot of us couldn’t have cared less. That was the thing about leisure time during the Lost Semester – it doesn’t matter what you did with it, just as long as there was plenty of it to waste.

Until next time...