Coming closer to the end of your game, and no one seems to care

The characters of Rex Hall that I’ve touched upon already were more or less a normal bunch: Alan and Michael Arthur were pretty easy to get along with and for all of Kenny Jones’ quirks and crotchets he was, at the core, an all right guy. But on rare occasion our dinner-time get-togethers were not with the already established Rex Hall Trio but the Rex Hall Quartet, and that’s when some of the fun got sucked out of the Octumvirate’s table.

On those nights we were blessed with the presence of Mike Smith – who had come out of his hole to eat with us. Mike was the bespectacled roommate of Kenny and (obviously) the other suite mate of Alan and Michael. We had heard rumors of Mike long before we first saw him, when Kenny had casually mentioned this roommate of his with great dexterity and a superb knowledge of video games. Alan and Michael had tales of how Kenny and Mike’s room was void of any light (trash bags covered the windows) and of the number of guests they regularly received for video game competitions. From these stories we sort of had our ideas of what this “Mike” must be like. We were a bit off the mark when we first saw him face to face.

I still remember my first encounter: I was late, lagging behind, and arrived at the cafeteria a minute or two behind everyone else. A handful of students separated them from me and I stood and watched Morty, Alan, Leonard, Phil, Michael, Kenny...next to Kenny was the surliest looking fellow I’d ever seen, staring off into space while the other six chatted aimlessly. In a nutshell, Mike’s facial expressions seemed to say that everything was bothering him, be that his roommate, the dining hall, the people in the dining hall, the people not in the dining hall, and or whatever else crossed his mind. To him, everything that tore him away from his own little world was just an inconvenience. How he was ever talked out of his sub-ground level room of Rex Hall I never knew.

Our first meal with Mike wasn’t that great and the subsequent times he appeared danced around the same level of comfort: yeah, sometimes he was bit more civil but then seemed twice as snide, so for the most part you knew you weren’t going to get anything of any merit out of him. That attitude didn’t go over well with the rest of us and as a result we often didn’t pay much attention to him when he showed up – which is probably why I remember very little about him. But even in the midst of Mike’s standoffish mannerisms, Kenny still tried for weeks to get some of us to come over to play a couple rounds of video games with the two of them before they started in on the competitions the two hosted nearly every night. Those of us invited usually excused ourselves by saying Stan had invited us to a recital and...well, you get the idea.

Still, for all the “fun” Kenny was having with random acquaintances and perfect strangers showing up a couple times a week to play video games well past midnight, you got the impression he tired of that environment quickly and liked having these “social” outings with other people. They were awkward interactions, at best, but it was painfully obvious Mike did not share the same level of enthusiasm as Kenny. It should come as little surprise that Mike’s meals with us in the dining hall became less frequent as the first semester wore on and he was nothing more than a distant memory by the end of the school year the next spring.

But we all became distant memories by that point in our lives, with the eight of us moving onward to better and bigger things. Our little “group of ate” had served its purpose by that time and we needed to focus on more important issues – schoolwork, graduation, life, and so on.

In short: game over.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Game Over
(unknown)
Overcome
From the album Blessed Are the Persecuted
1996

Deep inside your life, there is a void to fill with what you cannot find.
Lonliness finds you, you find there is a need, there is a need to kill.
But who's life is at stake here now, when did your own life become such a threat to you, you lookd around, is there nothing left, nothing left for you to do.
Is this the end of you string?
You find a welcome mat of death's sting.
Sorrow. Pain.
Coming closer to the end of your game, and no one seems to care.
Need something new, a breath of fresh air.
Done it all, nothing left to try.
It's time to see your life is a lie.
Lie.
It's time to change your life.
And a new gift has been offered to you.
A gift of peace, a gift of new life.
And new doors have been opened for you.
Jesus is waiting there to see you through.
The one who does give more than anything this world could give.
The one who does give more than any lifestyle you could live.
Anything this world could offer you, anything this world could ever give.

AEIOU's an ass-whoopin'! You're tooken into clear and present danger!

The eighth (but not quite final) member of the Octumvirate was a weird, wiry kid named Kenny Jones who showed up for meals only because he was the suitemate of Alan and Michael Arthur. One could make the case that Kenny looked like a living caricature of Stan Laurel with rubbery facial features and a pronounced chin. Rarely appearing for lunch, Kenny’s appearances were usually regulated to dinner where he just sort of ate, listened, chimed in occasionally, and then departed.

All these years later, Kenny is remembered for introducing the Octumvirate to the ancient martial arts style known as Shaquido. If that sounds made-up, it is. Most of the Octumvirate followed some professional football and basketball team to some degree and one of the big names at the time was the new guy playing for the Orlando Magic, Shaquille O'Neal. Besides his athletic prowess on the court, O’Neal jumped on the celebrity oversaturation bandwagon and released albums, appeared in movies, and approved his likeness for release in a video game. The game, the cringe-worthy Shaq-Fu, focused on O’Neal using his supposed martial arts abilities to ward off evil-doers from his dojo and protect the sensei. Or something like that, I dunno.

Anyway, Kenny found the whole notion of a Shaq-inspired video game ridiculous and arrived at dinner one night with Shaq-Fu trading cards. One of his video game magazines had a bigger-than-necessary promotion for the game and Kenny, eager to expose Shaq-Fu for its sheer lunacy, had punched out the cards as “gifts” for those of us who wanted to share the Shaq-Fu experience. The obverse had the official Shaq-Fu pose and logo, while the reverse explained the concept behind the game:


A dominating force on and off the basketball court, Shaq is the founder of Shaqido: an intense and extremely advanced form of martial arts. An enforcer of justice and champion for the weak and powerless, his blows rain down destruction on those who embody pure evil. Shaq is a short range specialist who relies on his agile moves rather than his magic. Shaq’s favorite closing move is the Shaq-uriken. Here he summons up a whirling blade which attacks evil with devastating force.

All these years later it still doesn’t sound believable.

I probably made Kenny happy when I jumped on the “Ridicule Shaq-Fu” campaign. Everyone had a good laugh at the cards, but I seemed to be the only one who took one of the cards back to my room. Why I hung it prominently above the door I don’t know. Nor do I know why I joined Morty, Michael Arthur, and Kenny for an evening of driving around town a number of weeks later. We’d been studying well into the night and now, hours after dinner, our stomachs craved a little something more. That night it meant we’d be hitting up Señor Taco, a sort of cheap, local spin on Taco Bell (they had this green sauce that was legit but not much else going for it). Seemingly high on ridiculing O’Neal, we pulled into the drive-thru. No sooner had we stopped did I ask the voice on the speaker box if they had Shaquidos.

Come on, it sounded like the sort of pseudo-Spanish names that Señor Taco gave their menu items, foodstuff such as Enriquichos or Grañdatas or the El Guaposita.

Kenny’s only other memorable claim to fame was showing up one day at dinner with what looked like a black magic marker that he had used to color his lower jaw. Most of us either stared inappropriately or tried to ignore the strange discoloration until either Alan or Michael explained Kenny was attempting to grow a beard. It was not an attractive addition to Kenny’s face and during that first week he’d try to nonchalantly bring it up into conversation or stroke it as if in deep thought while he sat on the sidelines listening. It was fairly thick in places which sparked theories of lycanthropy from Phil; this in turn prompted Alan to encourage his suitemate to drink more Coors and I suggested heavy doses of Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.

The members of our Octumvirate went their separate ways after my freshmen year though a few of us saw each other over the next three years. Not so much with Kenny. His appearances were rarer and rarer as the school year went by and was a distant memory by the start of a sophomore year. No one knew where he came from and no one knew where he went.

And no one went off in search of him either. Him or that video game.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
No Hook
(Bailey, K./Method Man/Shaquille O'Neal/RZA)
Shaquille O'Neal
From the album Shaq-Fu: Da Return
1994

[RZA:]
Spectacular cardiovascular attacker!
Shaq's on the track with the blackular,
Puzzler! Rugged slugger, 40 oz guzzler,
Gold nugget fangs punch holes inside your jugular
Veins... do it quick, before your brain get drained...
With the horror you now have become stained...
Ice cold, like the winter, Eskimo! Enter,
The skill like a splinter! A decimal,
Let's have a festival, Wu-Tang Killer Bees, we...
(Suuuuuuu!) Ah, intellectual,
Styles break your mind!
Shine, nigga, shine!

[All:] We don't need no hooks!

[Shaq:]
The Shaq Attaq has risen,
Au concrete PM this is twizm,
Always & forever, forever always attack,
I bring flava to ya ear like Craig Mack!
Life's a B and then ya D, refer to Nasty Nas Illmatic,
CD, #3 Static!
You don't want none, ya best to keep lookin',
AEIOU's a ass-whoopin'! You're tooken
Into Clear & Present Danger, I'm a perfect stranger,
Quick to rearrange a... outlook, so look out,
So here me comes! Quick to beat you down,
Like the RZA on the drums!
Change my name like Prince, punks be tremblin'.
My name ain't Shaq no more, call me Superman
Emblem! Marks, get set, go left,
The Shaq, the RZA, get ready for the Meth!

[All:] We don't need no hooks!

[Method Man:]
Dangersome, comin' mad phat, Terrordome,
Like whadva ak, we can get it on. Break 'em down.
I'm a set it, yeah, ooh dat dirty rat, bring 'em here
To the mindbender, the deathsender to your ear: Method.
Whatup, hookers? Hoodrats are no goodaz,
It be Tical breakin' rims with the Seven footer:
Shaq. Bring it to the front, now bring it back
To the head, black, 'cuz when my Soul Train hit the track,
Target: the Billboard Charts, don't make me start it,
The whole industry is gassed up and now they farted.
My object is destruction, for percussion, rhymes are bustin',
Got your wholes block duckin'
Down! The end is here, apocalypse now!
Gettin' shot, peace'll work it out.

(more We don't need no hooks stuff)

Pizza Break?!

It was sort of funny the way the Octumvirate expanded as the semester progressed. It started off with two roommates and then doubled into four people. In less than a month it snowballed into a group of eight students, plus or minus a few here and there. Any worry that we incoming freshman had about meeting people was quickly forgotten as each newcomer arrived. I first met Morty, then Morty and I met Leonard and Stan. We met Phil when he showed up claiming to know Leonard from somewhere. We met Alan when Leonard introduced him as being in one of his classes. We met Michael when we went to dinner with Alan. And so on.

Rex Hall was one of four large dormitories that sat on an elongated city block at the northern edge of campus. The dorms had been built in such a way that their back doors all exited into one large, shared parking area. This is the area where we first met Michael Arthur a few weeks into the school year. Alan had mentioned his roommate might join us, to which we all said he was more than welcome, but the guy continuously never showed up. Was he shy? Was he afraid? Was he some alcohol-induced phantasm that Alan thought up late one night?

One evening in early September, Morton, Leonard, Phil, and I approached the entrance to the long tunnel that led to the cafeteria. Alan usually waited for us here but tonight he had not yet arrived. Or so we thought. We found Alan off to one side of the parking lot watching someone throwing an aerobie, those lightweight, pink flying rings. Michael was going for height, trying to see how far above the buildings he could throw the disc-like toy. When he saw us he instead playfully flung it toward the four of us, barely missing Leonard’s head.

From this introduction, Michael could best be described as a very relaxed person. Very little fazed him and he much rather wanted to have fun than worry about bookwork or the seriousness of the semester. Still for all his playfulness his usual dress code was collared shirts, khaki pants, and the like. His major was English (I found that rather non-descript since he didn’t explain if his specialty was the language, composition, or literature) and he often identified himself as a “literary jock.” I like to think this stemmed from the quiz bowls he participated in that allowed him to showcase his amassed trivial expertise. Perhaps had academic strengths and prowess been celebrated in the same way that athletes were showered with praise then Michael’s abilities would have been better known across campus. Instead I’m sure he was thought of as nothing more than some geeky bookworm. On rare occasion he let slip with some of his arcane references during meals that resulted in nothing but confused looks from most of the rest of the group.

Michael and I didn’t interact much but the two of us did have Piggy. I was recently out of high school fresh on a multi-month class project involving The Lord of the Flies and still had characters and quotes on the mind. I had not spotted a Jack or a Ralph yet on campus but that large guy behind the pizza counter surely could double for Piggy due to his general annoyance.

There was, unbeknownst to most everyone it seemed, a silly rule that said you could not receive your main entrée or a secondary item, like pizza, at the same time. If someone wanted both the meatloaf and a slice of pepperoni that person had to find a table and set down his or her tray before returning to stand in line for that coveted slice of pizza; the general reasons being the staff encouraging better eating habits and trying to curb waste. I had discovered this the hard way early in the semester and remember being a bit perturbed but trying more not to laugh as I stood listening to this whiny kid waving a spatula and sputtering something about some policy. This anecdote amused Michael to no end because, as I later found out, he too had run into this same problem. Michael acted differently than I did for he went and told off the employee – telling him “sucks to your policy” or some such – and made it a habit of getting a slice of pizza a few times a week just to stare down his adversary.

This then was the genesis of my long-association with Lord of the Flies characters at college, most notably with my mimicking of rotund, bespectacled kids in striped red shirts named Piggy. The following semester was the last semester for pizza counter Piggy as he disappeared or graduated or something. Still, this bulgy cafeteria employee was the inspiration for a Lord of the Flies interview I did in an English composition course the next semester. Toward the end of my senior year I had to script a scene for a television writing course and chose to relive the Piggy interview from my freshman year.

Yes, all that happened because it was time for a pizza break.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Pizza Break
(Ben Fleming/Simon Fair Timony)
The Stinky Puffs
From the album Little Tiny Smelly Bit
1995

What's an Irish Boy with a good family doing in the gutter?

Five students from Bowman Hall made up the majority of the Octumvirate. The remaining three students lived down the hill from Bowman Hall and around the corner to the west in Rex Hall, one of the four-decade old housing units cobbled together after WWII. It was a male-only dormitory which probably led to the musty dankness that emanated from the half-underground first floor and spread upward through its four stories. It was a sobering experience for visitors to manage through their initial five or ten minutes and I can only guess how students who lived there ever persevered. One minor bit of hilarity that I found in the residence was that the hall mascot – apparently some held-over concept from the 1950s or 1960s, sort of like housemothers – was the lion (presumably stemming from the Latin rex, meaning king, and in turn referencing the king of the jungle). The catch here was that the masculine mascot was for a dorm named after the very feminine Blanche Rex, some former administrator from the past. She might have gotten a kick out of the dorm named after her but I doubt she would have liked the smell.

Leading the charge from Rex Hall was Alan Heathland, a normal looking guy in most every aspect. I recall mostly normal features with beady eyes and greasily-styled hair. Alan grew up down south in Port Wright which was about a six or seven hour drive from where we were. Thankfully for him he had an uncle and aunt living about thirty miles away that invited him out to their country club-like estate for weekends. Of course, Alan in turn invited his friends out a few times a month to cook on the outdoor grill, swim in the outdoor pool, and get out of the usual college setting. Or so I was told.

What stands out a decade later about Alan was his accent, something that Stan once said “sounded Peruvian” which in turn led to Stan and Phil bantering back and forth in a sidebar conversation about the merits about Machu Picchu. For whatever reason Alan never talked much about his background or family so most of us just let the matter drop. Not Phil, whose natural curiosity about everything kept him asking occasional questions trying to get Alan to drop a hint or two about his upbringing. His initial questions were not always tactful (“So, where are your people from?”) nor always understandable (“Sua mosca está aberta?”) but it was fun watching his mind wrestle for clues in whatever Alan said.

This went on for a few months before Phil quit guessing and finally said he had figured it out. “You’re Irish,” Phil announced one night at dinner. Alan, who all through this time had been a great sport about Phil’s questions, simply shook his head and said no, he wasn’t Irish. Phil didn’t seem to come to terms with Alan’s “no” and said to hell with that: “well you sound Irish to me. You’re Irish.” Thus Alan’s new nickname – Irish – was born, which lasted the rest of the semester and into the following spring term.

Irish became part of the Octumvirate because he and Leonard were in a class or two together. In turn Irish brought Arthur (his roommate) and Kenny (their suitemate) with him to dinner and all three were welcomed. Most of this crew from Rex Hall disappeared during my sophomore year. Perhaps Alan moved out to his aunt and uncle’s place to live out the rest of his college years?

Right.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Irish Boy
(Sanchez)
Paul Sanchez
From the album Wasted Lives & Bluegrass
1994

From magic beans and golden eggs to swollen livers and tired legs

During my freshman year I was rather surprised the number of places I went on campus and found that the university’s radio station was playing. I don’t know – I figured most people would not want to listen to awkward-sounding students muddling through their first attempt at being live on the air. It was nice to know that the station had an audience, but it could set you back when you realized just how many people were potentially listening to your sonic booms (i.e. mistakes). I mean, did everyone in Morra County have to listen right now?

I remember being pleasantly surprised that the main cafeteria on campus played our station, too. Café Belvedere was in the basement of the WPA-era Belvedere-Agora Hall, a female-only brick-and-mortar dormitory. Campus historians liked to tell the story that the dorm was built on the site of an old frame building that served as the first campus eatery and that Elizabeth Cady Stanton once spoke there on the matter of women’s suffrage. At this point in their story the campus historians liked to laugh at what they called irony, although if that were a joke it flew over the heads of most audiences. Anyway, once the new dorm was complete the basement became a huge dining hall with meals served to the girls at regularly scheduled times. As the lives of students changed over the decades this practice fell by the wayside and back in the 60s or thereabouts it became the largest of the three campus cafeterias.

Those odd members who made up the Octumvirate usually assembled at the western edge of the building at the opening of a long, subterranean walkway. At the opposite end was the main entrance and where a plump little woman named Katy sat. Her job was to scan the ID cards and permit entrance to the cafeteria which she did perched atop a lofty barstool. A short woman, probably no taller than five feet, Katy was a little scatterbrained and did her best to memorize the names of the students who passed through Café Belvedere. For some reason – one I never sought to correct – my ID card had only my initials and thusly I received a hearty, “Hello, M.C.” every time I entered.

Most of the employees behind the counters were students, though I never saw anyone from my classes; just as gratifying was that I never saw any of the employees walking around on campus. It was from behind the counters and in the kitchen area that I sometimes heard the radio station playing. Weekdays it was often too loud to hear anything, much less the employee in front of you but you could often make out the rambunctious radio noise on the weekends.

The only employees worth remembering were Staci Guard, the overly friendly sandwich counter girl, and Piggy, the rather round fellow that must have drawn the shortest straw daily to always get pizza detail. Staci always tried to “ham” it up with pastrami or tell “cheesy” jokes about the size of pickles, which meant she always had an audience. Piggy was less riveting than Staci and his endless boredom was regularly a ripe target for jabs. Of course, his real name wasn’t Piggy, but Mike Arthur and I named him for the William Golding character based on looks and general disposition.

Morty dubbed the fat, bearded man who wandered around the cafeteria as “Lucky Charms” because he sort of looked like a cereal mascot. We all about lost our lunch during the spring semester when he stepped out of his office dressed up in gaudy green garb for St. Patrick’s Day. Acting like a busybody, Lucky Charms darted behind counters or out among the students eating with neither place suiting him very well. Employees appeared to dread it when he stood over their shoulder (Staci wasn’t as chipper as she normally was), and those of us eating didn’t care to be interrupted with impromptu surveys of cafeteria likes and dislikes. Lucky Charms was later replaced by ABE, the Angry Black Employer.

A couple of years later the radio station had an unsuccessful live remote in the Belvedere-Agora cafeteria. Thankfully I wasn’t there as either a station staff member or as a member of the Octumvirate. By that time the Octumvirate was all but dead anyway.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Suppertime
(The Odds)
The Odds
From the album Nest
1996

an embarrassment of riches
up ahead between the ditches
steady on
pails of blue grass beads and baubles
in the toilets of the supermodels
steady on
watch what you wish for
as someone else pollutes it
some see the rarest bird
and hunt it down and shoot it
let me lose so beautifully
let me lick the dew from the money tree
have the moms of world all care about me
at suppertime
the road to wreckage stretches west
from survival to excess
and beyond
from magic beans and golden eggs
to swollen livers and tired legs
trammel on
the breakfast of failures
is an unexacting list
subtract oppurtunity
you can mix it up with your fists
let me lose so beautifully
let me lick the dew from the money tree
have the moms of world all care about me
at suppertime
let me feel what it's like to have it
let me battle all of your rich man's habits
let me cry down the front of a smoking jacket
after suppertime
let me stand hypnotized by what I'm doing
smell the orchids by the road to ruin
when the heirs are asleep and we think about screwing
after suppertime