Tales from the Lost Semester - Mid-Semester Break

“The Lost Semester was a time of discovery; a time of missed classes, missed opportunities, frat house living, late night food, 12-packs on Monday nights, vomiting, low self-esteem, high friends, hockey, hallucinogens, jury duty, conflict, poor decisions, bad grades and good times. Oh, and tons and tons of pot.”

That’s right, folks – on May 19, 2005, a new phenomenon was born unto the world – a phenomenon known simply as Tales from the Lost Semester. The 49 words listed above barely gave you, my nine preferred readers, a glimpse into the madness that was to come. Up until a few years ago, I lived in complete denial of the fact that I was a stammering, drugged-out head case with little academic skills and no romantic prowess to speak of. Only recently, as my ongoing maturation process continued, did I come to the realization that those were indeed some awkward times for yours truly. The next step after admitting that you were wrong, of course, is to come clean to those around you. The Tales have served as a great way for me to get some pesky things off my back, like the fact that I actually gave a speech professing that the Grateful Dead were the best thing to ever happen to music – hell, I’m not even sure if they were the best thing to ever happen to jam bands at this point. But that’s what maturity brings, friends – realizations that your views on what seemed acceptable, normal or sane at one point of your life don’t always age very well.

It took a scant 9 months, but I have cranked out a whopping 11 volumes of the Tales to date – a quick recap:

1. Intro/The Paper (Volume 1)
2. Where the Happy People Meet (Volume 2)
3. The Most Fun You’ll Never Want to Have Again (Volume 3)
4. The Nevada House (Volume 4)
5. Caps (Volume 5)
6. Are You Nervous? (Volume 6)
7. Stupor Bowl XXVII (Volume 7)
8. The Greatest (Volume 8)
9. The Dead (Volume 9)
10. Attius (Volume 10)
11. Are You Experienced? (Volume 11)

Quite an eclectic group of stories, if I do say so myself. However, there’s one thing that really frightens me about the Tales – these 11 initial volumes are in many ways innocent, endearing and amusing, and they don’t make me appear to be very troubled at all. However, as I peruse the subjects of the remaining volumes, my throat starts to dry up, my palms begin to sweat, my stomach begins to flutter, and I get just a teensy bit…nervous. Some of the things I plan to reveal about myself will make you scratch your collective heads and wonder how it is that I am a) employed and/or employable, b) married, and c) alive. Most of these stories are only known by a few select individuals, and some things have not been revealed to anyone – yes, you read that correctly. There are certain elements of my Lost Semester life that, for the first time EVER, I will come clean about. Oh, imagine the possibilities! For me, a load off of my mind; for you, an entertaining way to realize that you really weren’t so screwed up by comparison. Needless to say, I look forward to it.

Up until now, the Tales have been told solely from my perspective – everything you have read is based strictly on my memory of what went down that fateful Spring Semester. I feel that this cheats you out of the full Lost Semester experience, and my goal in these writings is to bring you back there, to live as I lived, drink as I drank, smoke as I smoked, hallucinate as I hallucinated…well, you get the picture. On that note, it is my great pleasure to present the Tales from the Lost Semester Mid-Semester Break – a forum featuring a few key participants in the madness. Our panelists today will be CS (a Room 23 resident), Sadahara, Pops and Mayo – quite an esteemed bunch, I must say. I hope that their input will provide you with some additional insight into the sheer madness that was the Lost Semester. So, without further adieu…

J: Gentlemen, welcome. To start us off, please discuss your favorite Lost Semester memory I’ve shared thus far.

CS: The most outstanding/everlasting memory about Room 23 was that at those lazy times of my existence, I owned the right to the most comfortable bed and recliner at the same time, not to mention the fact that I could never get out of bed for my only Tuesday/Thursday class at 12:30.

Sadahara: I enjoyed your walk home from the Nevada house and your speech to argue that the Dead was the best band of all time mainly because I'd never heard either. I almost barfed out of Pavlovian response with the Nevada story.

Pops: Got to be the episode on booming – I felt like I was there and it made me smile A LOT. Puliter Prize-winning stuff.

Mayo: Volume 11 (Are You Experienced?) is my favorite piece that you have written thus far. You did a great job capturing that evening. One thing I will never forget is the first time we did shrooms and how they put me in the best mood. I felt like we should redo the food pyramid and put shrooms on the top (or is it bottom). Fantastic.

J: Well, I’m glad you’ve enjoyed them. Given that you all spent so much time in Room 23 (which is why you’re all so prominently featured in these Tales), I’d be interested to hear your feelings on the Room 23 musical rotation. Maybe it was because I was so wasted, but I got the feeling that it was quite repetitive. And I always got the feeling that folks like Sadahara weren’t too well represented. Thoughts?

CS: The musical rotation really could have only lasted for the four months that we lived there. Truly a shooting star and sometimes maddening for Sadahara. However, I think we offered a much better alternative to a "Cure" soaked Room 20 (Dirk’s room).

S: Actually, I felt it was the best music in the house. People were very conscious of it and it was meant to enhance and include. No, I am not a big Dead fan, but there was always the Repo Man soundtrack. Also, Shakedown Street was a very nice catch-all album. Cypress Hill, Jazz, Beatles, The Rapper...I could go on and on.

M: The Room 23 musical rotation was a duumvirate. Did Miser own any music? Not that I am complaining as I enjoyed the musical rotation, but outsiders did not have much influence on what was played.

P: As a proud Deadhead I loved the music – the Dead and Allman Brothers. It was all good with me. Room 23 and (the Dead’s) "Unbroken Chain" will forever be linked. I also loved CS singing along to "Shaft". Hilarious.

J: Talking about the other important aspect of Room 23, what was your favorite “utensil”?

All (in unison): The Aquapipe, hands down.

J: Gee, I’m shocked that no one picked the shitty wooden bowl that I constantly had to farm for resin. Moving on – CS, in Volume 2, I describe you as "wily", "Slick bastard" and "Room 23 Alpha Male". How does this make you feel?

CS: The Volume 2 characterizations make me feel like I have become more refined in my later years. "Room 23 Alpha Male" was all bluster on my part. Miser could have snuffed me in a heart beat, but at least not without me taking a vital organ or two.

J: What about your role in the infamous “Paper” scandal – do you feel that the whole debacle was worth it? Was your grade justified seeing as I got a C?

CS: The First Triumvirate Paper Scandal was worth it a 100 times over. I felt I earned that B by my expert scheming and the fact that I won Rock-Paper-Scissors fair and square.

J: Yeah, I guess I shouldn’t be such a sore loser. Speaking of losers, you guys, be honest – just how fucking nervous was I?

S: Very nervous. Occassionally painfully nervous. To be honest though, so was I.

CS: I didn’t think you were that nervous; you were (and still are) verbose. But the hairdo didn't help.

P: J, you had your moments, but you were not nearly as bad as you think they were. Everyone was nervous at some point in their college career, as Sadahara alluded to. I think the Chronic would freak you out every once in awhile, and some of our friends loved to instigate trouble; yet all of our boys get unconditional love.

M: You were not that nervous! The only truly nervous times I can recall were when we were hacky-sacking.

J: Mayo, while I appreciate the sentiment, I think I have to side with the others on this one. It’s painful for me to think about. Must…fix…hair… OK, moving on. Sadahara, in Volume 8, when walking to That's Rentertainment, when did you make the determination that you would be renting "The Greatest"? Were there any other movies under consideration?

S: The decision to rent "The Greatest" was not made on the walk; that is for sure. I'd never heard of the movie before I saw it on the shelf. As I mentioned above, I too was pretty nervous in college and I honestly did not want to rent something that the crowd would poo-poo. In the state of mind I was in, I over-thought things about a billion times too much and ended up with "The Greatest". I'm guessing "History of the World" and "Weird Science" were both considered, as well as "McVicar" starring Roger Daltrey.

J: Personally I got a kick out of it, but you definitely were not so lucky with the others. But that was all part of the fun of our group – in many ways we were quite different, but we all found common ground (i.e. pot). On that note, Sadahara and Pops, you guys lived in Room 7, which can best be described as the not-quite-as-friendly version of Room 23. Where did those differences lie for you guys?

S: I suppose that Room 7 was the fun, but less-friendly, less-charming and more-drunken half-brother of Room 23. Way more booze, capping, metal, thrash, shit-talking and general meanness in Room 7. Please bear in mind that I'm not bad-mouthing my old room, for it had its own charm to be sure. I loved it. But Room 23 was more relaxing, quieter and cleaner. Plus, you all were more likely to have girls hanging out in your room so that was good. Really, I guess it boils down to fact that 7 had it's foundation in booze and 23 had its foundation in herbal delights and everything kind of goes from there, no?

P: I agree with Sadahara, your room was nicer (especially when you have the Big O and myself ripping most everyone we didn't like on a daily basis, and Sadahara would jump in but nearly as bad as us) and we did drink more. I think we got a little more traffic just because people were afraid of the "old" Room 23 and we never went to bed. Your room was a lot cleaner (we had Mickey's Big Mouth bottles and Keystone Light cans on our floor for the entire month of March – we’d just push them around for space on the floor to watch TV). But both rooms were arguably the best rooms in house – that's why we had all the guest partiers.

J: Well said. Speaking of girls, Pops – I alluded to the fact that you happened to date one of my close “relatives”. Describe if you will the awkwardness you experienced as a result of your dating Emma. Do you regret this relationship, and if so, why?

P: I have no regrets – it was a lot of fun. I probably wish I wasn't such a prick to girls, but college boys will be college boys. As far as awkwardness I just didn't want you to be pissed off at me, and I think you were damn cool about the whole thing – God knows what I would have done in your shoes.

J: Yeah, you’re just lucky I was a nervous little shit, or I might have pounded you. Or not. Let’s talk about Hell Week – Mayo, you definitely stand out in my mind as one of the key players of that miserable experience. How utterly disturbed were you when I rode the bike through the basement during Hell Week wearing tighty whiteys?

M: Actually, it was both funny and disturbing. At that point we had nothing left and that was the sign for me. sort of like when one of the losers going through with us was doing push ups and fell flat on his face and blood from his nose started falling down the front of his face and he refused to do anything about it in fear of being punished. But it was a very original idea and got many laughs!

J: Jesus, if there were laughs, I didn’t hear them. One last question – what is your favorite shrooming experience down at school?

(Editor’s note: I had to withhold many of the answers received to this question as it would provide a major spoiler of one of the most mind blowing Tales yet to come).

J: Well you guys, I really do appreciate you taking the time to weigh in on all of the goings on that semester. Needless to say, it would have been a lot more “lost” without you all (wiping away a tear…).

Friends, please stay tuned for the next 11 installments of the Tales, which as mentioned should be disturbing, hilarious, sad and enlightening all rolled into one!

Until next time…