It's Wake Up Time...Rise And Shine

The usual path undergraduates took in the communication department was to dabble in radio for a few years – maybe just one, and maybe just a semester to get it over with – and then get involved in the television side of things for the rest of their time on campus. Because, I guess, the faculty thought everyone wanted to be on television. This was hardly true but it was hard to win an argument against the set-in-stone curriculum.

To drive this home was the senior-level advanced television production class where students had to not just come up with their own episodic television program but script it, record it, and – again, because faculty thought everyone wanted to be on television – host it.

You’re taking your guidance from the force

There wasn’t any sort of specific science to how PSAs were rotated in and out of the control room but there was some rhyme and reason instilled into the process to ensure some continuity. This method always seemed to be there: when I became Program Director I picked up the process as it had been left for me, improved it where necessary, and allowed those that followed me to do the same. It was fairly simple and painless.

Thirty second (0:30) spots were recorded to 0:40 second cartridge tapes and labeled in red. Labeling was done with a typewriter and one of the never-ending packets of labels that always seemed to come out of nowhere. Running out of labels one week? By the start of the next another packet surfaced – usually with a few sheets already missing. I’ve no idea how they were kept in stock unless they got passed along with Son of Funkenstein CDs (see I Can Feel It In My Heart Something's Wrong).

Arithmetic, mathematic, same old form but assymetric

Ad Council PSAs were always a big deal – maybe not so much the message but the medium. Every few weeks a new PSA campaign packet arrived and dumped unceremoniously into the lap of the station’s production director for review.

The packets were immaculate in design: glossy, tri-folded envelopes sized about 9x11 inches, dolled up in colors and photographs promoting the latest campaign. Sometimes it was cartoon characters or clip art on the outside of the envelope - sometimes it was images from the television version of the PSA promotion. Inside was a treasure trove of information, most of which we did little with.

Joke by joke they spot erase you

I’ve already mentioned that not every aspect of our university operated radio station was created by station staff (see Matter of the Heart) and that most of these programming elements were Public Service Announcements, mostly distributed by the Ad Council (see You know I’d like to believe this nervousness will pass) but other non-profit organization or assemblage as well.

I’m sure the popular question is why we even bothered with such things in the first place. Why would a rag-tag group of college students put forth any effort into interrupting music programming – rock music, easily the only thing garnering any college-age audience in the first place – twice an hour with thirty-second smidgens of long-winded good advice?  (We were jaded enough to think thirty seconds was long-winded?)

Why?  For training’s sake, I’m sure. Part of it was ensuring we knew how to follow the format clock (see I see you dancing on the stage of memory) and the traffic logs and taking the designated break. In time (for those furthering our futures with work at commercial stations) we would be employed by stations with operating costs and budgets and that advertisements paid the bills (and, likewise, employees). Plus there was nothing like a hands-on atmosphere to hear in action some of the vocabulary that Dr. Propel spouted off in his classes – such as stopsets, spots, and PSA, to name a few.

I’m sure another reason was to just give some buffers between the constant flows of music – though I wonder if these stopsets were something Syd (“the Kid”) insisted on to ensure we sounded more commercial and professional than we really were. I don’t remember a lot of PSA-laden breaks during my Freshman year, though by my DJing days as a junior and senior, it was recognized that stopsets occurred twice an hour across all shifts, were at least sixty seconds, and consisted of a recorded station promo, PSA, and then a sweep back into the music.

Lastly being non-commercial meant that we broadcast news and information in the public service. Right.

But how many people rocking out to Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, or (God forbid) Seven Mary Three appreciated the interruption with a reminder about getting their eyes checked? That’s when I was glad some of the PSAs were comical, attempting to add some humor to what could be dry subject matter. For example, there were a series of back-to-back fifteen second spots from the American Ophthalmologist Association that aired sometime around 1996-97. A female voice kept urging a driver to “back up, back up...back up...” until there was a shattering of shop widows or something; an announcer asked “Had your eyes checked lately?” The second fifteen seconds had another short vignette along the same theme. There were a handful of these spots in rotation: someone driving couldn’t see the road, someone baking couldn’t read the recipe, someone standing down a pitcher couldn’t make out the baseball. Each ended with a noticeable sound-effect – a honk, a retch, a thud – that helped to underscore the seriousness of the incident but maybe evoke a chuckle or two.

Yeah, the spots were meant to be humorous but this wasn’t exactly the way to get a laugh during the rock shifts.

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Dead Red Eyes
(Bachmann, Gentling, Johnson, Price)
Archers of Loaf
From the album White Trash Heroes
1998

Dead red eyes flickering half bright went on for ride (?)
In slick silk. They were on to my circumstantial slide,
Blow by blow chipped off shell and bone. Tripped and talked around
It could not fall through the crowd of careful lies busting open wide.
Sensible fact or fable, watch us fall from your favor. (?)
Since you knew too much about it dressed in wax you lit the town in
Candlelight, flickering half bright. Well I held it in my hands and now it's
Gone gone gone.
Saw it with my own two eyes, just pass me by.

Took a walk through a town of half stoned clones
Bound and gagging. Joke by joke they spot erase you,
Heard their news but it did not phase you one little bit,
Not one little bit. So I meet you by the light of main street
Stranded ghosts where I've been waiting. Kill it 50 times or more,
Before I'm through I'll kill it 50 times more, just to bring it back to life,
And bust it open wide again. Well I held it in my hands and now it's
Gone gone gone.
Blinded by the neon in your dead red eyes.

the one about sharp-dressed men pledging their allegiance to nautical-themed footwear

Something peculiar happened one autumn morning in Dr. Propel’s Intro class. People started wearing suits. Business suits. Neckties and such. Again, this wasn’t the faculty (which wasn’t really into this sort of thing to begin with), but the kids in class. This wasn’t the norm. Up until now male students wore just about anything: t-shirt and jeans, maybe a collared shirt, and so on. Yeah, once in a while you got a buttoned-down shirt but never a tie, never a jacket. Never the inkling that it was the norm.

And it wasn’t just there in the Communication Building – male students all across campus were waltzing around in this elaborate costume. Had the entire male student population of the university suddenly cleaned itself up and decided to spend the week in their Sunday best? No, as I was to find out soon thereafter from some of my more jaded contemporaries, this was all about buying friendship.

Yes, Pledge Week had come to campus.

One of the funniest things about seeing these students stride about in their elaborate costumes was how out of place they looked. You know, the low-maintenance kids with wild Hair Bear Bunch manes or dicey five o’clock shadows that threw on whatever they could find in their closest the first thing in the morning and then wore that the rest of the day. But now that they were zealots-in-training for the bacchanalias that were to come they started each day with a shave and hair-comb, tie with blazers, khakis, and body-fluid colored ties. And boat shoes. I never understood how or why nautical fashion made it to the mainland.

Anyway, the idea – as best as I and my jaded contemporaries could tell – was that the kids had to dress-up to play with the big boys. And this is where those jaded contemporaries liked to point out stuff about elitism, schmoozing and boozing, and how mindless conforming meant all of ‘em looked the same no matter which group they were trying to buy their way into (groups with names like Alpha Trian, Mu Fan Chi, or Up Salon Snuh).

And so they came into classrooms in this get-up and tried to look nonchalant but it didn’t always work. When that kid in the back corner, who wears nothing but t-shirts and shorts every day, suddenly shows up in a suit – you know something’s up. When the kid who smells like eggs unexpectedly begins dousing himself in cologne – you know something’s up. When the guy who never says anything to anyone starts butting into conversations between girls – you know something’s up. More so, when it’s Monday again, when uniforms have been hematologically resealed and perfect hygiene isn’t a must for the eight o’clock Comp class – you know Pledge Week is over.

The silliness subsides. Life went on.

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Bulldoze the Fraternities
(Cherry Two Thousand)
Cherry 2000
From the album Taint
1998

the one about the lord of the flies interview

Most of my Lord of the Flies presentation was to be an updated rehash of the paper I turned in the year before in high school, though I did have to double its length and the number of sources. I don’t recall doing this for anything in Comp I so this may have been the first year I was required to visit the library and seek out various periodicals with already published essays and reference them on the token bibliography page. As for the presentation, for what I was to distribute to the class, I constructed a sort of “family tree” of the characters (granted, none were really related) with hand-drawn caricatures that identified everyone by name, their role, and what they symbolized.

In the days leading up to my presentation (which was to be a Thursday) Michael Arthur and I went over what was to happen. Part of me recalls us visiting the room late one day to go over the layout and the best plan of action. The only thing Michel really blanched at was that he had to be up and ready to go by 7:00. Other than that, I think he was just as anxious as me to see how this was going to be pulled off. I think Ms. Fontaine was curious, too – a few sessions before the presentation I asked if it would be a problem using props or other characters. She said not all: those sorts of things could only serve to boost one’s grade. From the way she looked at me I could tell she wondered what I had up my sleeve.

Here’s what happened.

Thursday morning Michael and I got to the room a little before 7:30. I had noticed over a period of several weeks that students usually went straight to their seats when they arrived – no one ever walked around the partition between the podium and west wall. This meant that Michael could quietly sit back here among the surplus equipment and wait for my cue during the presentation. Ah, but when would that be? Today would be four more (possibly the last four) though, as I cautioned Mike, I had no clue when I’d get to go. My hopes were to get this over and done with as quickly as possible and let Mike go back to bed – but I couldn’t make any promises.

When class started Ms. Fontaine took her seat in the audience with the students and called the first speaker for the day. It wasn't me. While I was somewhat anxious to get started, I was thankful that class had started without anyone discovering the secret that stood (or, as I was told later, spread out reading a paper) on the other side of the wall.

At about 8:45 it was finally my turn. I got up and handed out the “study guides” to the class and began reading my research on The Lord of the Flies. First there was Ralph, then Jack, and maybe Sam and Eric next – I forget the order but I knew I needed to have Piggy near the end. A few seconds after I began reading the section about Piggy there came a knock on the glass door behind the wall. It obviously woke everyone up and I played off being startled.

“...and...oh, yeah, hey, I thought it might be best to actually bring in someone who knows a lot about this character an’ so I’ve asked the one and only Piggy to join us today. Hold on a sec!”

I walked around the wall and signaled to Mike to open the door loudly. Seeing the faces of my classmates when I came back around the wall was priceless.

“Well, welcome then Piggy, thanks for stopping...do you want to come in and be seen?”

“No,” wheezed Michael in a loud, whiny voice. “I’ve been stranded on a desert island for I dunno how many weeks and I didn’t wash up b’fore I came in so I smell pretty bad. Plus I gots assmar.”

“Huh-huh. Well, sucks to your assmar. Tell us a bit about yourself....”

Michael, with a copy of my research notes in hand, proceeded to read off information about Piggy and how life was good when the conch was around and how things got out of hand when Jack had his way. I half-sat on the tabletop of the right wing seats, situated in a way where I could see both Michael standing and the rest of the class wondering just what the hell was going on. I hammed it up, too, turning periodically to the class and acting impressed at what was going on. This ran for a few minutes before we decided to wrap this “interview” up in a most disastrous way. As I thanked Piggy for coming by, Michael threw open the doors and started yelling and making rambunctious noises to indicate he was being dragged away by Jack. As I said before, Michael knew The Lord of the Flies well enough to throw in some other jabs – “No...no! Don’t kill the pig! No! No! Take your hand off me...stop...” – and then, for icing on the cake, he tossed an old pair of glasses from the behind the wall onto the floor. Finally, with a thunderous noise, Michael dragged himself outside and slammed the doors. The interview was officially over.

“Piggy, everyone.” I started clapping and, while the rest of the class began applauding with mild confusion, I nonchalantly retrieved the glasses from the floor and went right back into the presentation, ending with a brief spiel on the titular character.

When I was done nodded a brief thank you and returned to my seat while everyone applauded once again. In my seat, the girl in front of me turned around and smiled: “that was good...but how did he know when to come by and be interviewed.” Because he’s Piggy, I said coyly. Mrs. Fontaine, also seated in the row in front of me, turned around as the next student ascended the podium and also said good job: “but he really didn’t look like Piggy,” she said with a wink. When I turned around I realized that from where she sat one could see through the large wall-length windows and anyone passing by. I always assumed she only witnessed one person walking along the old Avenue E service road that morning: a tall, skinny kid with unkempt hair that looked nothing like the character described and who was probably making a bee-line straight back to bed.

That didn’t cost me any points, though – I easily aced the presentation with an A.

Later than morning I met up with the rest of the Octumvirate and Michael and I laughed at pulling off such a bizarre interview. Who would have guessed that what had originally been a one-shot joke with the pizza server would go on to be a memorable college experience?

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Lord of the Flies
(Gers, Harris)
Iron Maiden
From the album The X Factor
1995

I don't care for this world anymore
I just want to live my own fantasy
Fate has brought us to these shores
What was meant to be is now happening

I've found that I like this living in danger
Living on the edge: it feels, it makes feel as one
Who cares now what's right or wrong? It's reality
Killing so we survive wherever we may roam
Wherever we may hide, we've got to get away

I don't want existence to end
We must prepare ourselves for the elements
I just want to feel like we're strong
We don't need a code of morality

I like all the mixed emotion and anger
It brings out the animal, the power you can feel
And feeling so high with this much adrenaline
Excited, but scary to believe what we've become

Saints and sinners, something within' us
We are lord of the flies
Saints and sinners, something willing us
To be lord of the flies...

the one about finding piggy

One year before I was a student in English Composition II, I was a student in a senior-level high school English class. The major topic for that spring was an all-out study of William Golding’s classic, The Lord of the Flies, part of which involved me composing an “in character diary” as well as a short essay (maybe three or four pages). Golding’s novel struck a nerve and I ended up quoting bits of it in high school and – apparently – into college (though I doubt I was ever in a position to chant “kill the pig, cut her throat” in conversation, polite or otherwise).

What with the memorable character of Piggy still fresh on the mind, I came to college and during my first semester discovered a modern-day Piggy working behind the pizza counter in the Belvedere-Agora cafeteria. In my mind, Piggy looked like the young boys from The Far Side cartoons: dumpy-looking children with striped shirts tightly fit over a balloon-shaped frame and wearing glasses with thick, clear lenses that may (or may not) hide pea-sized eyes. This too described Piggy in the cafeteria, though this “young man” had elected to add “facial hair” into the already burgeoning equation. It wasn’t pretty – but his annoyed grunts waving the pizza spatula around were always worth a laugh. Someone had put him on pizza patrol and there was no way he lettin’ anyone walk away with both an entrée and a slice of pizza on the same tray. Sucks to that rule...and yeah, sucks to his assmar while we’re at it, too.

Also versed in The Lord of the Flies was fellow student Michael Arthur who I had met my first semester on campus through a mutual acquaintance. Late into that semester I had tried ordering pizza for dinner, only to get read the riot act because I couldn’t have two main courses at the same time. It might have been an important statute in the cafeteria code but it sounded asinine coming from this student.

By now it was the spring semester and in Comp II, Ms. Fontaine directed us to pick something – practically anything – from the realm of literature and compose a ten-or-so page essay on some aspect of it. We had done minor writing assignments most of that semester but this major essay came midway into the course and would serve as a sort of mid-term project. Honestly, I was a bit lazy and therefore got permission to revisit The Lord of the Flies – careful of course to not mention that a huge chunk of my essay would come from something a year old. Oh, yeah: other requirements for this essay included that we read the completed text aloud to the rest of the class and that we create a one-page capsule review to share. At the end of the project each student would have 25 or so one-page write-ups that would go on to become – surprise! – potential test material.

Somewhere along the way genius struck. If this was to be a presentation then I needed something that grabbed everyone’s attention, something memorable. My topic was to be the symbolism behind the names and traits of the characters – Ralph and Jack, Simon and so on – of which Piggy always seemed the popular one for various reasons. (I’m sure the fat, loud, nerdish types are popular literary stereotypes.) What better way to introduce the character of Piggy then by interviewing him about his time on the island and his encounters with the other characters! (Never mind the fact he never leaves the island....) And what better person to portray Piggy than that guy serving pizza in the cafeteria?

Alas that was not to be and so I asked Michael if he’d be interested in this plum role. As soon as he agreed – and I like to think it wasn’t a difficult sell – I began drafting just how this would play out.

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Piggy
(Simmerlein)
The Fringe
From the album Chardonnay
1997

the one about english composition, part two

As the uninspired name suggested, English Composition II was the follow-up to English Composition I. Both geared toward freshmen, I often wondered if upperclassmen ever enrolled? Or was the idea that the English department required passing grades in English Composition I and II before any other English courses could be attempted? Maybe...I wasn’t an English major so I don’t know.

English Composition II was very much the class I thought English Composition I should have been. Part II seemed more structured and organized. Part I seemed hastily tossed together. Part II seemed to actually dwell on composing essays. Part I seemed more interested in discussing how you’d piece together an essay, given the chance. Part I also focused more on basic capitalization and punctuation skills that I felt was overkill. For part II, a thick textbook of short stories and poetry was promptly dumped in our laps in our first class (well, not really – we had to pay through the nose for the book first) and we quickly dove into travelers from antique lands, decreeing stately pleasure-domes, and observing lumps of lapis lazuli for tomb effigies of soon-to-deceased clergy.

At the helm of the class was Ms. Eva Fontaine, a demure caricature of the token spinster librarian figure. She’d probably been teaching for decades and hadn’t yet found any displeasure in the honorable act – though she surely wasn’t too excited about the actions of the modern student. Still, for all her wrinkles and stutters, Ms. Fontaine was sharp as a tack and exuded a fierce determination to teach and instill some redeeming qualities in her classes.

And that was the odd thing about our class: there probably weren’t more than 25 of us, meeting in a fairly large auditorium Tuesday and Thursday morning at eight o’clock sharp. Getting up and out the door by seven thirty or so wasn’t difficult by my second semester. I forget what I did for breakfast these days but I could easily amble my way from the dorm to the quad in mere minutes and find where I was going with little interruption. But where I ended up...geesh! This half of the Eckert Complex was the old band building and perhaps where this class met was once a performance hall. Many of the rooms in this part of the building had been practice rooms for band members – now they were over-sized offices that held two or more instructors.

The auditorium was obviously empty every time I arrived since I was constantly early; on my first day, I took an aisle seat three or four rows from the front (on stage left of Ms. Fontaine). Since the class was so small she asked that I take a seat in one of the first four or five rows in the middle section, instead. I remember grumbling, thinking how everyone always says your interest in a class is shown by your distance from the instructor (those down front find the topic engrossing, those in the back care not but for passing). Here I was showing an interest and being asked to move. So I took a seat as far back would allow: aisle seat, five rows back. By myself.

Since I arrived early I was usually by myself in the room for a few minutes before anyone else materialized and so I took to examining my surroundings. It was a well-lit room, for one, as the room jutted out on the west side of the building and had floor-to-ceiling windows on two walls. The third wall was partially masked by a shortened wall that served as a backdrop for the instructor or speaker. This dividing wall was about two-third the length of the western wall of the room; one could easily walk around either end and stumble into various equipment such as a television/VCR combo, an overhead projector, and stacks of extra chairs. There was nowhere else to store this in the room so it was stashed here, out of sight. Sort of. Opposite the equipment was the western wall of the room and two sets of doors that led outside and into the long-disused remnants of Avenue E. Why expensive equipment was stored mere inches from a door that could easily lead to a getaway truck, I never knew. I assumed if it wasn’t anyone else’s concern then it shouldn’t be mine, either.

By the time someone else showed up for class I had been watching the world through the windows or doors for a few minutes. It gave me time to think and prepare for the day. It also went on to give me an idea for one of the funniest things I did in college.

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Composition II
(Guberman)
Morgan Guberman
From the album Hamadryas Baboon
1998

the one about having an eckert complex

Little ever seemed known about George M. Eckert (M for Mandrill, I later discovered), whose brief biography said he was originally from somewhere out east and had attended some college whose name began with a V. Vanderbilt? Villanova? Vatterott? I don’t remember. An English professor by trade, he came to Grandville in the mid-1920s and reportedly left town in five years for bigger and better pastures; one assumes this position at GU was just one in a series of small steps leading to bigger and better things for Mr. Eckert. But that too is a bit unclear.

George Eckert must have been held in high esteem by the colleagues that remained in Grandville because his name seems to have been evoked for years. An occasional dip into the yearbooks of the time indicate he was well-liked and, from those volumes immediately following his departure, much-missed. Looking sort of like a poor man’s John Updike, George Eckert’s name was finally etched on the face of the university in the 1950s with the construction of the Eckert English Building. As I noted years later, I can’t think of a more interesting honor for someone whose only association with the school is five years of teaching English.

The three-story Eckert English Building was a proud looking structure of grayish-cream colored stone whose short end opened out onto the main quadrangle. Its front doors, and the two-story windows directly above the door, were framed by a multi-colored brick façade that ran the height of the building; from a distance it appeared as jagged cut stone, something perhaps to give it the resemblance of a little texture.

Next to the Eckert Building was the band hall. In the 1980s the administration decided to not knock down the English and band buildings but to combine the two structures into one. This wasn’t something entirely new on campus as a few dormitories had been structurally fused together in years past and went from being known as X Hall and Y Hall to the X-Y Complex. After the newly built section between the English and band buildings – which mostly contained an open and windowed walkway and staircase – was complete, the combined structure became known as the Eckert Complex.

Somewhere along the way another complex developed, this one speaking to the fact that the original two buildings did not stand on equal footing. This meant that when you entered the front doors of the original English building on the first floor and walked up the staircase in the new windowed walkway, you found yourself on the first floor of the original band building. It could be a confusing mess if, for example, a class schedule said to meet in room 105 and you entered at the wrong door – if you’re told something is on the first floor, and you’re fairly sure you’re on the first floor, then you don’t usually go up flights of stairs in pursuit of a misplaced classroom. All this perceived confusion could have been avoided through signage but there was none during that school year I frequented the building (maybe there was some years prior or later but I don’t know). So in GU-speak, having an eckert complex meant you were prone to getting lost in the English building.

Ms. Getnam’s English Composition I class met in what was the basement of the original English Building. For English Composition II, I walked upstairs to the first floor, up another set of stairs to the first floor, and then down a long hall to an auditorium that was badly undersized for the number of students in the class.

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Complex
(Edwards, Unruh)
Unruh
From the album Setting Fire to Sinking Ships
1999

the one about remembrances along religious row

Because I lived on campus my freshman year, and because everything I needed was mostly in the immediate area, I didn’t do a lot of driving during the week. A lot of that also had to do with the fact that it would take me until the following weekend to find a parking space. But when I could I liked driving around to familiarize myself with other areas of campus and the surrounding community.

And the community did surround the campus, creeping up on you like arthritis, nearsightedness, or that toothless pan-handler at the corner of Central and Olive. Gleaned from historical photographs, I learned the university’s original tract of land was atop a hill north of downtown; between the campus and downtown were houses. Naturally, as the fledgling campus grew it bought nearby land and razed those houses and constructed new academic buildings or dormitories or parking lots, or, in rare cases, green areas.

Fast forward a few decades and it looked as if the college and the city butted heads along the southeastern-most edge because the houses remained standing. Apparently the owners didn’t necessarily want their houses torn down, particularly when their homes still had a lot going for them –structurally sound, kept the cold out, and so on. Because these homeowners had rejected the college’s advances it forced the campus to build elsewhere in other directions for a few years. Then a curious thing happened. The people in the houses along Union Street moved or died and their houses were up for sale.

“Hooray,” said the university, “we can finally buy that property and do something with it!”

“But,” said the comptroller, “you’ve blown a fortnight of funds in mere days and are almost in the red, aren’t you? Without funds you can’t very well do both.”

“Oh, dear,” said the university, “I hadn’t thought of that – we have the money to buy the houses but not enough to do anything with them except let them be.”

“Ah, that was easy,” said the comptroller, and for an encore he approved the purchase and installation of a half dozen telephones booths across campus only to be later smothered to death while participating in the “stuff as many people as you can into a telephone booth” fad of the time.

So the houses didn’t go anywhere and were instead passed-off as university-owned except that they looked totally out of place and unlike any other structure belonging to the university. Nomadic departments such as University Housing, Graduate Studies, Art, and others were uprooted from their modular buildings and squeezed into one of these houses with the instruction to “make it [their] own” but then that idea lasted only for a year or so.

Enter Religious Emphasis week, a five-night (later three-night) examination and discussion of the spiritual life of students, observed from the early-50s through 1972. A religious council organized the event and welcomed leaders from various denominations to speak to smaller groups each night. Space was needed for the events and all eyes again focused on Union Street. Within a few years the houses turned into denominational student centers for the Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, and Catholics (the Presbyterians hadn’t colonized yet and the one house given over to Nontrinitarianists was never used). Inside the houses were totally remodeled, oftentimes with the addition of small chapels or sanctuaries for Sunday services; the exteriors didn’t change much except that the Catholics transformed their two-story bungalow into a squatty, dwarfish cathedral through the magic of plywood and acrylic paint.

The Religious Emphasis week coordinators thought the houses becoming student centers was a good fit, seeing how Union Street was the neighborhood that evangelist “Handsel” Monday visited during one of his small-town revivals in the late Nineteenth Century. A woman who grew up in one of the houses and later attended the university told the story of seeing Monday speaking to a small crowd that had gathered under the boughs of the willow tree across the street (“...he sounded scary,” she recalled).

But I digress...

The houses still stood during my time on campus but most of the church groups had moved on. The Methodists apparently knew a good thing when they found it and appropriated for their own use the backyard of the long-vacant Episcopalian Student Center, whose members now met at the church across town. The Catholics had moved off-campus, too, leaving behind a bizarre-looking building and their long-suffering neighbors, the Baptists.

Those houses that were unoccupied were mothballed and used for storage, though it’s anyone’s guess as to what remained within their walls.

the one about why we should wait more than thirty minutes for dr. blanc

Behind the Media, Culture, and Society course was a man named Dr. Fredrick Blanc, a middle-aged army brat that had never married, never had kids, and never seemed to like anyone or anything. He wasn’t as rough around the edges as that may sound, but he didn’t take a lot of crap from people for too long. He did take his work seriously, be that teaching, mentoring, or researching, which he did for hours on end (weekday or weekends) in his office. He did, after all, have one of the few Ph.D.s in the department at the time and therefore found little interest in the operation of the radio and television stations that attracted so many students to the program.

Blanc was a native of Massachusetts and had never lost his accent, but had tried, he said, during his childhood years moving with his dad from state to state and from army base to army base. From this way of life must surely have developed his well-known demeanor and temperament. This attitude wasn’t meant to scare off students, though. Far from it; in fact, more often than not students found they came to have a better appreciation for both Blanc and the course in later years. And that seems to be the core reason why Blanc taught the communication history, theory, and law courses – what the students learned would be with them long after the “button pushing” in the radio and television stations had faded.

So what of this famous Blanc attitude? Everything boiled down to respect: don’t interrupt him, don’t aggravate him, and don’t belittle him of anyone else. If you could manage that, and if you participated in class discussions, then you could probably get an A or B – depending on how well you did on his tests. But the surefire way to piss him off…the fastest way, the easiest way, as if was nine o’clock in the morning…was to yawn. Honestly, if you covered your mouth and didn’t make it obvious you might still get a glare from the hyperactive guy teaching at the front of the class. But God forbid – don’t let loose with a loud, long sigh…ouch! “Hey!” he snapped in his unmistakable New England accent, “I don’t teach in your bed, don’t sleep in my class! Stop it!”

These yawns usually came on the tail end of his “screenings” – essentially a chance to watch television in class for ten or twenty minutes. I actually think he called them “screenings” to get by with showing them in class, because I remember someone asking if we were going to “watch TV” one morning and this sort of set him off. We weren’t watching television, he’d explain, we were collectively screening a culturally significant program via television. And then he’d sort of give a half-tooth wise-ass smirk. (Yes, he did smile – he was generally well-deposed.)

Another good way to piss off Dr. Blanc was call him “Freddie,” his first name. “Hey, I’m your teachah, not your friend!” he’d snap, going as far to call it impolite and rude.

One of Blanc’s memorable moments happened a few weeks into the semester. Blanc’s class met in the same room that Propel’s Introduction class had met the previous semester and since both were geared toward freshmen the room was filled with a lot of the same people. The room was abuzz of chatter that morning in the minutes before class started and, without any interruption, we continued taking until someone pointed out it was ten minutes after the hour. Dr. Blanc was tardy. Soon the talk turned to the fifteen-minute rule: how long did students have to wait for a tardy teacher? Everyone was quoting something different: was it ten minutes for an MA or ten minutes for a Ph.D.? Maybe it was twenty minutes for a Ph.D. No one could quote the rule because there was no rule anywhere to quote. And that’s when people started leaving.

I remember being torn at what I should do? It was obvious he was late and I didn’t like wasting my time. On the other hand, Dr. Blanc did say this morning we were to expect a quiz – would he postpone it for the next class? About midway through the hour someone went to the department secretary and had her call Dr. Blanc at his house. He was not happy. Less than ten minutes later Dr. Blanc stormed into the room in one of the most memorable and unfashionably uncomfortable outfits I ever saw: a gray-yellow windbreaker thrown over a T-shirt, acid-washed jeans of some color between red and blue, and tennis shoes chewed through by Cerberus. He was pissed off because of his own tardiness and more so because more than half the class had bailed on his planned quiz.

Those of us that stayed took an abbreviated version of the quiz and, I believe, we all aced it. The next time class met the remainder of the students were told they should not ever again, under no circumstances, without penalty of death or a swift kick in the arse, desert one of Dr. Blanc’s classes.

Diligently silencing all protesters, he proceeded to dump a lengthier and more difficult quiz on those that walked out and let those that already took the first quiz go for the day.

We never saw that “outfit” again, by the way.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Tardy
(John Shiurba)
Eskimo
From the album Some Prefer Cake
1999

the one about media, culture, society, and so on

When the spring 1995 semester began I was still classified as a freshman and still eager to work in the radio station. However, for reasons I’ve never remembered, I missed the semester kick-off meeting and therefore didn’t do anything for FM 89.3 that semester, 7 a.m. newscasts or otherwise. There’s a part of me that thinks I assumed the schedule would holdover from the previous fall semester...but then if my classes didn’t even do this why would I expect a silly part-time schedule to do the same?

But I didn’t leave the Communication Building. No, that would have probably been a dumb move on my part, not taking a course in my major. Looking back, it probably wouldn’t have hurt to take another Communication course that semester. No, I still visited the Communication Building three days a week (M-days) to take part in yet another 100-level course. This one was titled Media-Culture-Society (COM-187) and its purpose, according to the instructor, was for us students to develop a historical knowledge and appreciation of media development in America. His desire, or so he reiterated more than once, was for us to never watch television the same way again.

There was a lot of history in this class. I mean, the syllabus began with the note that in 1872 James Maxwell theorized the idea of wireless communication. From there we discussed Marconi playing the mamba and listening to the radio, the rise of someone named Kent Atwater, and the role Felix the Cat played in the early days of television (...makes you wonder if he’ll show up 80 years after his first appearance to help usher in Digital Television later this month). The rise of cable television, programming syndication, and ratings were also major talking points in this class that really took its course title seriously.

Besides reading articles from the textbook about the history of radio and television, we also viewed “screenings” from the extensive archives of Dr. Blanc. Back then – and even now as I write this – I wondered how Fred Blanc managed to track down everything he did. He had memorable episodes from classic sitcoms, samples of “old time” radio comedies, and an assortment of advertising oddities. And a little bit of everything else....

One of the more memorable items was during the discussion of tobacco on television and – whoa and behold – Blanc pulls out a series of cigarette commercials, including a bizarre one featuring Fred Flintstone. That, and a montage of Old Joe print ads (playing pool and driving cars) set to something from the Miami Vice soundtrack (this was a few years before the camel’s demise). We also got an earful of Archie Bunker spew a line of racial slurs a mile long during another program – all in the name of education.

But, word to the wise with these “screenings” – don’t yawn or you’ll face the wrath of Blanc!

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Medium Cool
(Birdsall/Detmold/Kaika/Trombley)
The Reducers
From the album Shinola
1995

the one about walking to the student health center

The Student Health Center was an unattractive one-story brick building that stood on university property south of Rex Hall. It was a confused little building that jutted out in all the wrong places, often in badly constructed angles, and sat in the middle of a sea of cracked and disheveled asphalt. One got the impression that the original intention was not to have a building this small take up a plot of land that large but perhaps something went awry in the construction phase.

I was supposed to walk to the health center once a week for allergy shots. It was a fairly quick and painless walk – the street that dead-ended outside between Bowman Hall and the Communication Building was Seventh Avenue; I walked down the hill two blocks to the intersection with Riverside Drive and then crossed the street to the health center. Five minutes tops.

But it didn’t take long for me to think twice about being a pedestrian around traffic along Riverside Drive. Yeah, I may have been too nervous to cross the street when cars were nearby. I had seen a few students chased out of the zebra crossing by cars that could not wait (driven by other students, no less). These pedestrians managed to get out of the way as quickly as possible, sometimes to the other side of the street but many times back to where they started. Therefore I remember hanging around the corner some mornings “causally waiting” for the cars to go by. It wasn’t always busy, yet I managed to always be on the scene when a garbage truck of delivery van was visiting the area.

Of course, once I crossed the street I still had a good walk in front of me through the seldom-used parking lot. Health center staff filled up about a fifth of the spaces and since the entire lot was designated for use only by faculty and staff that meant students couldn’t park there unless they wanted a ticket. So who parked there aside from the occasional campus service vehicles or University Police Department squad cars? Nobody. But then why UPD never noticed the cars running students off the road I’ll never know.

I quickly learned that the interior of the building was as devoid of common sense as its exterior insinuated. Windows stared out in most every direction (including up, as I discovered in the back of the building) and in some areas at each other (one pane of glass in the waiting room looked into one of the examination rooms, and vice versa). The waiting room was as painful as the clichés would have you think, complete with old magazines, complimentary literature on drug products, and some sort of music from an overhead speaker.

Just as cliché were the people that worked in the health center. Possibly atypical for the polite vibe that the university promoted, the woman behind the desk did little to welcome you and smiled only when she handled money. I never saw the doctor assigned to this outpost but there was a laundry list of rumors about him: that he had been reprimanded by the local hospital and worked with students as his punishment; that he was pushing 90 years of age and knew little of modern medicine; and that he prescribed aspirin to everyone for everything (a long-standing joke I heard both my freshman and senior year was that the doctor gave a kid aspirin for a compound fracture).

Huey, Dewy, and Louie were the nicknames of the three nurses I encountered and who were the only medical staff I ever saw. Each week it would be one of the three who would call me into the bowels of the building to shoot me up with serum. Then I clamored my way back to the front to sit and wait. Because there were three different people there were three totally different bedside manners to deal with.

One – the tall, Native American looking nurse – said I had to wait fifteen minutes after I got the shots but would usually let me go after maybe five or ten minutes if my arms looked okay. The downside was that she always talked to you for ten minutes or so before actually giving you the shot. Another woman – a short woman with her gray hair in a bun – went through some sort of ritual before administrating the shot (wiping down the needle, my arm, and God knows what else with alcohol pads). The major obstacle in dealing with her was that she insisted on at least fifteen minutes of waiting time after the shot. You could easily be there an hour after sitting in the waiting room and the post-shot follow-up. The third woman was certainly more pleasant but a bit younger than the rest. I tend to think she was new on staff, fresh from medical school or an internship somewhere, because she was sure to let you know how important allergy shots were and why I should also come in for flu shots and understand what happens when.... (Wow, looking back, the nursing staff might have doubled as the cast in a university production of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.)

But midway through the fall semester I started putting off my weekly walk to the health center for a myriad of reasons. Part of it was crossing Riverside Drive and dealing with the traffic. I also used the rain as my excuse. Part of it was defiance. I was at college and was going to do what I wanted to do. Assuredly, another reason was I didn’t like dealing with the various personalities within the health center. It was frustrating wanting to make a quick visit only to linger half an hour in the waiting room and then have to deal with one or more of the nursing staff with their dissimilar views on procedures.

In the long run, the only noticeable thing about not getting shots was that I didn’t seem to have any allergy problems. Heading into winter and throughout the spring semester, my weekly visits became every other week, and the nursing staff told me that I could never build up a resistance to allergens if I didn’t get the shots on a regularly scheduled basis. But nuts to them and nuts to the only thing the three of them seemed to agree about. I had received shots for about a decade up to that point and after missing a few weeks I realized I wasn’t suffering from bouts of ragweed, pigweed, pisporum weed, or all those other grasses. Why spend money to buy a serum that wasn’t really doing anything for me, anyway?

Waiting to get my shots was discouraging, yes, but so was waiting to cross Riverside Drive. If there were cars passing through the intersection when I approached, I usually turned the corner and walked alongside Rex Hall and began pacing back and forth as if I were waiting for someone. And it was here I noticed a strange segment of sidewalk. Decades ago when the cement was laid, a group of people must have walked this very path before the cement had fully hardened. Ghostly shoe prints were still visible and one could literally walk in the footsteps of former students. I was sure the shoe prints were created by students because another segment of the cement was signed by people named Jim, Terri, Sharon, and others with dates as far back as the 1960s.

I suppose there were so tired, so tired of waiting, too.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
To Our Health
(Jan Hedin/Magnus Karlsson)
Happydeadmen
From the album After the Siesta
1998

the one about the brief tenure of the first university president

It had started to rain again. We both froze as the man stepped forward and pulled out a flashlight. Its light shone on both Cody’s and my face and from that circle of light we could just make out his face, too. Although it was partially hidden by his hat, the man was middle-aged with huge, owl-eyed spectacles. His mouth was twisted into a frown and he nastily asked what the two of us were doing out here, where we were going, and why.

Cody was a bit more quick-witted than I was, plus he also had a bit of temper (and neither of us appreciated the threatening stance or meddlesome questions). When the man had stopped barking his questions at us, Cody irritably let fly with a response. “Listen, we’re trying out for the cross-country team so we thought we’d take a run. Is that all right with you? We were tryin’ to get over to th’ dorm but you showed up an’ all...”

Owl Eyes ran the flashlight up and down to check out what we were wearing. He then causally turned the light on the nearby University Police Department call box situated between Old Administration and the Communication Building. Cody held his ground. “Look, we’re not doing anything wrong,” Cody said crossly. “We aren’t drinkin’ or anything. An... and we could even ask you the same the question. What are you doing out here? Snoopin’ around in the dark? ”

The man’s face dropped and his attitude changed in an instant. Gone was the threatening groundskeeper he pretended to be; now Owl Eyes seemed embarrassed by his outburst and more so for being caught. He hem-hawed an apology and muttered something about running into a group of toughs during his previous research. After that encounter he said he was always defensive and edgy when confronted.

The two of us exchanged glances as if to say it was time to go. The strange, lonely owl-eyed man began pleading for us to stay, as if this would qualify as penitence for his earlier actions. We had taken but a few steps toward Bowman Hall when the man popped the question: "Don't you want to know what I was doing?" I must admit, Cody was more inquisitive than I was at the time. He turned around. "Yeah, you're casin' the joint and are goin' to end up being arrested for breakin' and enterin', that's what!"

Neither of us was prepared for what Owl Eyes said next. "Did you know this university’s first president was found dead somewhere in this area?" This was new to me and Cody, too. I knew nothing about the first president and sadly not much more about the man currently holding the position.

Cody and I stopped and listened as Owl Eyes began the brief story of Theodore Conall. He had been hired from somewhere out east – "Birmingham, Biloxi, Bedford, I don’t remember where" – where his extensive background in teaching had earned him the nickname "Magic Tad." These experiences impressed the local board of directors who saw fit to hire him for work in Grandville. Conall arrived in the early summer of 1873 (his wife and family wouldn’t arrive until late-September) and spent his first month conferring with community leaders and helping further shape the curriculum of Grandville Normal that opened that October. But over the next few months Conall changed. While he seemed as dedicated to the role of president as ever, he avoided excess attention and shied away from interviews. Once boisterous meetings with the faculty were mostly muted affairs, or so said occasional items in the Examiner-Press. Conall led opening day ceremonies on October 5 with what went down as the longest and wettest investiture speech in school history. Ten days later his body was found in the tree-lined acreage behind the red-brick Grandville Building. "Somewhere out in this area," Owl Eyes said wearily, waving a limp arm out toward the quadrangle.

Neither of us said a word but Owl Eyes knew what we were thinking. "He succumbed to Typhoid fever...or small pox. Some disease"

A disease? Well, that sort of sucked the air out of any potential mystery. We were tired. We were drenched. By this time Cody and I knew we needed to be getting back to the dorm. The rain had slowed down to a light drizzle again and Owl Eyes said a few more words and thanked us for bearing with him. With a down-turned head, he galloped toward where we had come, to the other side of the quadrangle and a parking lot just on the other side. Cody and I watched until his raincoat melted into the colors of the night. We then both agreed the best word to describe the evening – and Owl Eyes – was "weird."

We got back to Bowman Hall close to nine o’clock and immediately washed up and went to bed. It was had been a long day preparing for the rapidly approaching fall semester and now, for it to be capped off with some strange story from campus lore…well, the mind wondered about who the owl-eyed man really was and what he was doing. But those questions would have to wait for another day.

We weren’t even college students, yet.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Man of Mystery
(Michael Carr)
Fathoms
From the album Evening in Nivram: Music of Shadows
1997

the one about an escapade at orientation

While it was one of those Saturday “Meet and Greet” programs when I first saw Bowman Hall, it wouldn’t be until summer orientation that I had the privilege to sleep in the decades-old building. Scant memories of orientation remain, though I still remember it was a two day “festival of fun” held in late July. We were to report to campus by mid-afternoon Thursday and be ready to spend the next day walking the campus. Friday morning was spent within the core program areas (every freshman took an English course, every freshman took a history course) and the afternoon was regulated to meeting with the program area we wanted to major in. I naturally spent the afternoon in the Communication Building.

Those of us being “orientated” were housed in Bowman Hall, chosen for the three-day event because it was in the heart of campus, mere minutes away from most of the activities. It operated those days much like it would during the school year, which means that I had a roommate. Yes, while I’ve said Mort was my first roommate at college, the first person I shared a room with was Cody Marrow.

Why is it that every Cody I’ve ever met in my life – and thankfully, it’s only been two or three – insists on self-applying the nickname, “Code Man?” It isn’t funny. This “Code Man” was big – football player big. But he didn’t play ball and he didn’t talk much. We met Thursday afternoon and hit it off the best we could, though I think neither of us were the type of person we would have associated with in different circumstances. After dinner I took a brief stroll around campus and returned to discover “Code Man” had brought a television, the only accessorily relief from the vacant room.

We met up for breakfast and then went our separate ways. It was an eventful day, with me registering for my first classes and meeting with the coordinator of the Communication Department; outside the big event was the university-sponsored “picnic party” in the mall area next to the student center. That sort of thing didn’t appeal to me so I stayed away. That night tuned out to be the big dance in the ballroom, which neither me or Code Man expressed any interest in attending. The problem with that was the Bowman Hall residence advisors (RA’s), in an effort to promote unification and a new chapter opening in our lives (their words), were going from room to room to force us from the building and drag us to the party (if need be; their words). Code Man had only caught wind of this mandatory requirement during dinner so we had to act fast when we got back to our room.

There had been a light late-afternoon shower that by dinner time had progressed to a fine mist. Thinking the rain would soon let up, the two of us slipped out the backdoor of the dormitory into the night with only the haziest of plans. Since most everyone would be convening at the Student Center next door our strategy was to head off in the opposite direction, splashing and slogging through puddles and the wet underbrush washed into the sidewalks and streets. My quick tour of the campus the night before came in handy as we made our way from structure to structure, keeping close to the sides of the buildings and never straying into the halos illuminating from streetlights above. Neither of us said anything; silently I wondered if we’d get caught. Surely the University Police were out on patrol tonight what with all the guests in Bowman Hall. Maybe they were hiding in the shadows of the stoic frieze outside the Music Building or leaning lazily along the northern edge of the library at the book drop. But there was no one.

Our little jaunt lasted as long as we thought it should – over a half hour – and we covered plenty of ground on foot that evening. The mist turned to a light sprinkle through which we could make out shapeless forms darting quickly in the shimmering twilight. Cody and I were nearing the central part of campus now. This was our victory stretch, a clear shot from one end of the campus to its center, down one side of the quadrangle, and then a few clever twists and turns and we would be back in Bowman Hall.

What was that? Cody stopped short and spun around. We were dead still. Somebody – or something – was making a lot of noise on the other side of the quadrangle. What little light there was swirled in the thickening mist. It was too dark to see anything and neither of us thought to bring a flashlight. Was it following us? In my innocence I asked if it was a dog. I got the answer I deserved. Hesitantly the two of us moved on, down a steep staircase and then through a canopy of limp, leafy branches from a nearby tree. It wouldn’t be long now. Finally the close shadows of buildings and trees fell away and we reached the lane that divided the quad. A brisk walk across the quadrangle and we could see our home away from home, Bowman Hall. We stood next to an impossibly large box-like building, silent and secure. We had reached the Old Administration Building.

And standing at the side of the building, in the shadows of the old, unused outdoor staircase, was a man. He wore dark green raincoat and floppy-brimmed rain hat that kept his face dry in no way at all. The shape turned to face us and then lurched forward.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Orientation
(Jose Padilla)
Jose Padilla
From the album Souvenir
1998

the one about a man wearing bird shit

An ode this week to Bowman-Oates Hall and the big-talking, horn-blowing, glad-handing show-off that will be forever known to me as Bird Shit.

Bowman-Oates Hall was a four-story dormitory and where I lived my four undergrad years. It was perfect and pristine in exactly no way at all, perhaps aware that it was not long for this world. At one time it had been one of the more popular on-campus dorms, partly because it was squared away in the center of campus but also because it was coed, had its own cafeteria, and parking was a breeze (out back, in fact). I chose it for those reasons but also because it was across the street from the Communication Building, though “across the street” is a slightly misleading term; one end of the “street” had been sealed off decades before and it the narrow strip of broken blacktop served mostly as parking for Communication Building faculty and staff.

My first encounter with Bowman Hall was probably during one of the university’s “Meet and Greet” sessions held once each long semester – once in March, the other in October – to allow potential students the opportunity the chance to walk the campus, meet with instructors, and peek inside academic buildings and dormitories to see what this college thing was all about.

Whatever my first impressions of Bowman Hall were are long forgotten. My memory of this "Meet and Greet" Saturday is still fresh on my mind.

Everyone met at the coliseum by 8 AM and following the welcoming ceremonies we broke into groups of about 10 students to tour the campus with our guide. What made these tours interesting were the people – students, of course – culled to act as tour guides. My guide was most certainly a member of a fraternity and more than likely had partied the night before all the while forgetting of his commitment the following morning. He didn’t reek or slur his speech or anything immediately noticeable but he didn’t react kindly to sunlight or repeated questions.

For reasons I’ve never understood, but that still resonate clearly in my mind, my guide somehow misunderstood my name as “Greg” when we were introduced and not Martin or Marty or something along those lines (or even, as I’ve been to some, Mark). Then he thought my brother, who was tagging along with my parents and me, was the soon-to-be freshman and started asking about his major.

After the tour I dubbed the guide “Mark” – possibly in retaliation for not being able to retain my name. Mark did little more than waddle around the quadrangle and point out buildings and their contents though it was not as convincing a show as you’d expect because Mark relied heavily on reading verbatim from the signs out front the buildings.

However the real gem in our tour was the guy near the front of the crowd dressed in black. Black shirt. Black pants. Black bucks, and probably black socks but no one checked. Black hair; oily, swimming in a swamp of Wildroot or shoe polish or some other God-awful concoction. His face looked like a catcher’s mitt, wrinkled and tan. My mom said his dentures were slipping every time he smiled. He didn’t smile a lot because he talked excessively about his daughter. The girl was the smartest student to ever come out of the Montezuma school system, or so claimed the man in black. He proudly rattled off a list of her high school highlights: cheerleader, volleyball squad, wrote for the school newspaper, and was crowned Homecoming Queen, Prom Queen, and Miss Chi Chi (whatever the hell that was...) all in the same school year. I have no idea if that record has ever been beaten.

Listening to the father boast of past accomplishments wasn’t irritating enough. Her father seemingly knew that her name would be on the lips of every student within the first few weeks of her first school year. She was destined for popularity! Every time our guide mentioned something about a building – “this one houses the campus television station” or “this is the English building” – her father man would loudly announce some ridiculous claim like “you’re gonna see my baby on that television channel” or “my girl has a book of published poetry.” The girl, walking nearby as she balanced her family tree on the end of her nose, smirked and feigned interest in the tour.

Of course, the tour was thirty minutes and after ten minutes we were more than ready to jettison this man in black. And that’s about when some of us noticed the man’s shirt wasn’t really as black as the man thought.

Somewhere between the quadrangle and mall area, maybe somewhere around the Old Administration Building or Bowman Hall, the man in black walked underneath a bird. That’s when the bird let loose with its opinion on his daughter’s achievements. It was, as far as we could tell, a very large bird. Sadly, the man had neither seen nor heard the bird’s recent activity. Most everyone else in the tour did see what happened. And most everyone laughed.

It made for a memorable Saturday morning.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Bird Shit Magnet
(unknown)
Debris
From the album Errata
1997

Downstream

So, how did you do on last week’s quiz? That’s great.

Not only did we have pen-and paper quizzes in the classroom, but there were hands-on quizzes in the lab workshops. Remember a few weeks ago the crazy camera movement quiz Propel had on the floor of the television studio? That counted as a quiz. And even if that activity wasn’t a graded quiz, the material learned from it would be possible topics for a later quiz. Of course, the camera movement game would not have been undertaken only for show – there would have been a reason for us participating in it. Aside from some strange fancy of Dr. Propel’s, that is.

All our quizzes came back to haunt us at the end of the semester. That’s when we students faced the dreaded “Final Exam.” I learned early in my freshman year to ask – if the instructor did not make it abundantly clear – if the final would be cumulative or not. If it was cumulative then everything from day one in the classroom was fair game for the test; it not, then we knew to focus on material since the last major test.

Dr. Propel smiled and said cumulative, as if that were a surprise. It wasn’t that bad because a few of us that were both in the class and put in time doing radio news or sports got together and pooled our resources. We put together a fairly comprehensive study guide of vocabulary terms and list questions (e.g. name two of the five FCC commissioners) to prepare ourselves. Of course this sort of thing worked great for the classroom final exam.

Not as much for the lab final, where we corralled into Studio 3 and waited our fate with Dr. Propel. He had us sit in a row of numbered chairs along one side of the room, though either the third or fourth chair had been pulled out into the center of the studio. We took our seats but were told not to get too comfortable as we’d be up moving around a lot during the next 90 minutes (the length of time designated for each final exam). There was little surprise when Dr. Propel explained he had another “fun” activity prepared and, just as before, we were supposed to be quick and on our toes when participating.

Our final would be to prove our mastery of the audio and video equipment by both operating it and answering questions about its role in the radio and television environment. When we began, the first student in the row was called forward; Propel then instructed everyone to move up a chair (this meant the person who originally, and reluctantly, took the third chair in the middle of the room was now against the wall in the second chair, and the person in the fourth chair now sat unhappily in the center of the room).

The first student was directed to follow Propel into the control room. There he was to cue a record on a turntable and identify its parts (e.g. motor, cartridge, etc.). He or she was then sent back to the studio and took a seat at the back of the row; the next person in line was called forward. This next person was asked to properly thread a reel-to-reel machine and record his or her voice. Then the following person had to operate the camera and zoom in on the person seated in the center of the studio. Another person had to record something to cart. Then the next person had to mix his or her voice with music from a CD and record this to a reel-to-reel. The subsequent person had to move the camera according to Propel’s instructions. And so on.

Those of us in the studio were always moving from one chair to another. Sometimes we were in our chairs for only a few second (Propel had asked something either relatively easy or the task at hand took very little time) or sometimes it felt like minutes crept by slowly. Through this cycle each student would be tested on some aspect of each equipment, though it differed for each person (discussing it afterward, another student and I discovered that while I had to mix my voice and music from a CD and record to cart, this other person had to mix voice and music from the turntable and record it on the reel-to-reel).

At any rate, I still remember to this day the one thing I faltered on. I was able to get through most everything without issue except for the downstream keyer. After doing something with the video switcher, I was asked the name of the last, or final, keyer in the switcher. I choked. I had no idea. The only reason why I remember the answer all these years later is because Dr. Propel began giving me non-verbal clues. It was like a bad game of charades: he sat in his chair and pretended he was casting a fishing line. My mind went blank, mostly as I tried to figure out what on earth he was doing. He then moved his fluttering hand away from him; this, I could only guess, was supposed to be a fish.

I finally said I didn’t know the answer.
“Downstream keyer,” came his answer.
“Fine, now what were you doing?”

The clue was that I had to cast the line “downstream” to catch a fish. I would not have guessed that in a hundred years. But such was the final exam (which I passed) and such was the final time I interacted with Dr. Propel.

And yes, we also had to spell potentiometer.

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Downstream
(Morris Gould)
Irresistible Force
From the album Global Chillage
1995

Newsbreak: You know you’re breaking my heart and you’re taking me down

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:

Trade barriers among the Pacific Rim nations are coming down. Indonesian President Suharto says the leaders of the 18 Asian and Pacific nations gathered in his country for an economic summit have agreed to drop all trade barriers among themselves within the next twenty years. President Clinton was calling for the bigger industrial economies of the region to drop trade barriers by the year 2010 or earlier. Suharto said at the conclusion of the summit that human rights were not discussed.

Tropical storm Gordon is passing between Florida and Cuba as it heads for the Gulf of Mexico. Sustained winds are about 50 miles per hour and forecasters expect a lot more rain today. The storm hit Haiti over the weekend killing 100 people. Heavy rains yesterday disrupted telephone services, cut power to more than 200-thousand people, and force the space shuttle Atlantis to land in California.

Showers today with highs only in the 70s; cloudy and humid tonight with lows in the 50s. Currently it’s 66 degrees.

---

That’s the news for this morning. Today is either Tuesday or Thursday and we’ve had to deal with the bothersome Bob and the Big Dog or laidback Mike and James.

About midway through the semester the news staff was asked by our director, Troy Meadows, to take our scripts into the newsroom when we were done. The idea was to allow the next newsreader to see what was used the previous hour and then “update” anything for the next hour. Apparently, for me to have all my scripts, I did not follow this practice, or I did and managed to still retrieve them a day or two later. I tend to think I just kept the scripts because nothing I read would ever need updated. All my stories were international and probably of little interest to those listening. I don’t think I ever met who did the news after me, either; on Mondays I was out the door to class and on T-days I usually wanted to get into Propel’s class a few minutes early.

Why? Probably to look over the last notes we took to prepare for a quiz. Yeah, we’d probably had at least one quiz a week, sometimes one on both Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Now it’s your turn.

Take out two sheets of paper...it’s time for a quiz.

1. Define broadcasting. [Sowing of seeds by scattering them over a wide field.]
2. The pulling apart of thinning of vibrating air molecules, creating low pressure or partial vacuum? [Rarefaction.]
3. The changing of energy from one form into another? [Transduction.]
4. Anything that interferes with the communication of the signal from the source to the receiver? [Noise.]
5. The height of a sound wave? [Amplitude.]
6. A contest is a lottery if it involves what? [Chance, consideration, and prize.]
   
7. Monaural literally means? [One ear.]
8. The sound source coming closer to the microphone and increase of bass response? [Proximity effect.]
9. Substance or device through which a signal is channeled? [Medium.]
10. What controls the output level for each channel? [Potentiometer.]
11. Which pick-up pattern is the most directional? [Hyper-cardioid.]
12. The scale to measure the relative loudness of amplified sound, where 0 is used as a reference level for the proper audio output level? [Volume Unit meter.]
13. What is the phone number of the FCC? [202-418-0200.]
14. One of the biggest problems with carts and/or cart machines? [Don’t cue automatically.]
15. What wave-form is a representation of the original signal? [Analog.]
16. SESAC stands for what? [The Society of European State Authors and Composers.]
    
17. The 3-pin cable and connectors used in audio? [XLR.]
18. The laser in a compact disc player uses what substance? [Gallium arsenide.]
19. Plug-in connector are also known as? [Jacks.]
20. In Communication 136, if you had no absences you would enter the penalty area on which tardy? [Your eighth.]
    
21. What is the variable electromagnetic field which affects the particles on a recording tape, thereby recording or erasing information? [Flux.]
22. What is the address of the FCC? [1919 M Street, N.W., Washington D.C. 20554.]
23. Which is vertically propagated? [AM Radio.]
24. The Chairman of the FCC? [Reed Hundt.]
25. What is the most common format of non-commercial radio stations? Second most common? [Classical. Religious.]
26. How many classes of AM radio stations are there? [Four.]
27. Radio stations are licensed for how many years? [Seven.]
28. The process by which radio waves weaken as they travel through space? [Attenuation.]
29. The FCC wants DJs to know what? [Know how to give/receive EBS test, perform station identification, read meters.]
30. Announcing songs already played on the air is what? [Back selling. Come on!]

Time's up!

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Question
(Rick Johnson/Tony Pomilla)
Temper Scarlet
From the album The Crayon King
1996

Newsbreak: Reach Around Rodeo Clowns

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:

Senator Phil Gramm said Sunday he would file this week as a Republican candidate in the 1996 Presidential election. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gramm said he would file papers with the Federal Election Committee this week to “put the legal structure in place,” although he does not expect to announce his candidacy until March.

OJ Simpson’s lead attorney Robert Shapiro is looking for ways to personally cash in on the media frenzy over Simpson. NewsWeek reported in its November 21 edition that Shapiro obtained a powerful Hollywood agent to field book and television offers. It later quoted the agent Ed Hookstratten as saying he sounding out writers to ghost write a book for Shapiro.

The English Channel tunnel – Chunnel – is open for trains now. Hundreds of people left Paris, London, and Brussels today in high speed trains that ride the rails of Chunnel. Round trip prices range from 152-to-311 dollars. The Paris to London trip is about three hours.

Cloudy this morning with scattered thunderstorms later today, highs in the upper 70s; the rain continues into the night with lows in the 50s. Currently, at 7:02, it’s 66 degrees.

---

After the Tuesday and Thursday morning newscasts there was just enough time to eat a cereal bar for breakfast, find the latest edition of the Screed, and head upstairs for 90 minutes of Dr. Propel’s class. Unlike M-days when my mornings were stacked with classes, T-days consisted of only two classes that were hours apart from each other.

Something called College Mathematics was my only other T-day class, held from 2-3:30 in one of the many similarly-named Academic Classroom Buildings (this one being dubbed ACB4). The instructor was the stereotypical college “prof,” an older, heavyset man with wispy gray hair and glasses who wore sports coats and vests but never ties. He went by the handle Dr. Cornelius Kirk – and yes, the pretentious phrase “by the handle” was very much the way he talked. But due to Dr. Kirk’s maturity and seniority, many students perpetuated a nickname they had been passed down from previous years: Captain. Therefore I had Captain Kirk for college math.

(I was actually surprised that midway through the semester that some of the smart alecs in class, two of whom I eventually likened to beavers, actually started calling Kirk “Captain.” This was a no-no. First off, throughout the semester Kirk corrected any student addressing him with a title other than “doctor.” He wasn’t Mr. Kirk, he was Dr. Kirk and had the degrees, the dissertations, and the domineering personality to back it up [he only used the first two examples in his clarification]. Secondly, it didn’t take much to irritate Kirk and after the third or fourth “Captain,” and the laughter and giggles that naturally followed, he peered over his glasses and pointed a pudgy finger toward the back corner. In no certain terms he told them to knock it off.)

Kirk’s class was essentially a cheaper, no-thrills version of the two algebra classes I had taken in high school. Most of the topics Kirk touched upon were familiar, though we had not gone into the same level of detail in high school; however many of the students had apparently not had a math class in a number of years and were constantly asking questions, often time about some of the simplest concepts. Like graphing a line. If anything stands out all these years later about Kirk’s class it’s that no one seemed to know how to graph a line. I won’t pretend to be an expert about algebraic equations – neither now, in Kirk’s class, or even in high school – but I thought this was one of the fundamental basics that everyone could muster. I was wrong.

The only other thing that stands out is Kirk’s penchant for ridiculous phrases (such as “by the handle”); hands down the one he used the most was “workhorse equation.” About midway through the semester we began a long, strung-out unit on matrices after, I assumed, Kirk gave up on everyone’s inability to graph lines. I forget the details but there was some basic expression that we all needed to know that would help us out later down the line. Weeks later, after we had flown by the easy lessons and were dealing with matrix addition, multiplication, transposition, or something, Kirk reminded us of this “workhorse equation” as the one that would solve all our problems. This “workhorse equation” was referenced frequently, with Kirk’s unabashed enthusiasm for it another target for the beavers.

I must have given the two class clowns the nickname “the beavers” when I failed to think of another animal to degrade. They were older than most other students, probably in their late-20s, and not at all a fan of Captain Kirk. One reminded me at the time as a possible beatnik: slicked-back black hair, pointy facial features like a jutted chin and sharp nose, and very outside-the-norm dress. Both lived for aggravating Kirk to no end, either by mocking his mannerisms, cracking jokes, or making him repeat something that he’d already discussed repeatedly. After going on about the rules of matrix multiplication for twenty minutes, one beaver would casually ask, “So you can't multiply a 2x3 and a 4x1 matrix?” An infuriated Kirk glared in their direction and barked back that “For the nth time – no! – I've said you can't do it!”

Even though the beavers irritated him Kirk was generally well-disposed with all the students and would go to great lengths to help them understand the topic at hand. While commendable, this generally led to extensive and drawn-out discussions that more often than not made Kirk forget what his original point was.

Besides the beavers, the only other student I remember all these years later was one I dubbed the Waddler. He waddled through the door and then waddled to the far side of the room, all the while that song by Dion played in mind with the lyric “he waddles around an’ around an’ around....”

Thankfully, this was the only math class I had in college and after this semester I never saw either the beavers or Captain Kirk again. However in my later years as an undergrad I did sort of miss courses like this – those with non-Communication majors. After seeing the same people day-in and day-out it was a nice change to see a bunch of students with different majors all taking a core class.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Beaver
(Quentin Jones/Wendell Jones)
Reach Around Rodeo Clowns
From the album Whip It Out
1997

Newsbreak: Twenty-four Seven

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:

Tom Foley lost twice election night: he lost his post as Speaker of the House, but it got worse when he conceded defeat to GOP newcomer George Nethercutt. Foley, a 15-term congressman, becomes the first speaker to lose re-election since the Civil War. Even if Foley had won had won his election in Washington State, the Republicans would still control the House, making Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich the pick for the speaker’s chair.

Today Jordan’s King Hussein makes his first public visit to Israel. His trip makes him only the second Arab leader to visit in full view of the world. The king will exchange ratified copies of the Israeli-Jordan peace treaty at a cultural center today with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Partly cloudy skies today with highs in the upper 60s; fair and cool tonight with a low near 44. Currently, at 7:02, it’s 50 degrees.

---

I’ll be honest: a few weeks dealing with Dr. Propel felt more like months. And months after the school year started it felt like a lifetime of reading, writing, listening, viewing, and being quizzed in Dr. Propel’s introductory class had flown by and I was more than ready for his class to end. Whatever happed in his class – anything discussed, anything written on the board, anything viewed on the monitor, anything hands-on we did in the introductory lab course – was fair game for what Dr. Propel lovingly called the “regurgitation.” This was, of course, the dreaded end-of-the-semester final test. And don’t think for a minute the test, much less this guy’s regular pop quizzes, were restricted to broadcasting.

What was one of the first things driven into our head far back at the start of the semester? Ah, yes: Dr. Propel’s office location and telephone number. This was not the sort of “memorization” that I had expected in college. Honestly the concept of office hours was new to me, as high school teachers had a designated classroom that served as an oversized make-shift office when needed. Not so here. Every instructor had his or her own office whose size and shape correlated to his or her position in the department. In short, the new guy got the three-sided room under the stairs and the head of the department got the spacious area with coffee maker and “secret” entrances.

The actual occasion when the instructor would be found in the office was also something lost on me – I really didn’t care when Dr. So-and-so or Dr. Whosis would be in their office. I was not making plans to stop by. But office hours were something nearly every student clamored about, though I found this comical. Many students circled or highlighted the days and time on the syllabus. It went without saying that many never utilized these office hours until late in the semester when, to be fair, obtaining an A was all but impossible and coming in to schmooze with the teacher wasn’t earning either of them (the instructor or the student) any brown-nose points.

Anyway, Dr. Propel was in office 247. He repeatedly bragged he was the only radio/television instructor on the second floor (the rest of the offices belonging to print journalism instructors), though how and why he ended up where he did was never discussed or mentioned. By what can only be called pointless coincidence his phone extension was 1365.

The importance of all these numbers was lost as we students read the syllabus (and later watched Propel read the document in character. This was always a hoot, watching a fellow of infinite jest recite “serious” class rules in his nasally sing-song voice). With his trademark half-toothed grin, he eventually asked one session early in the semester if any of us caught on to what made his office and phone number special or unique. Our answer, in unison: no.

He couldn’t keep the secret any longer. You didn’t pronounce his office “two forty-seven,” you pronounced it “twenty-four seven” – as in twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Yeah, we got it. And from there it didn’t take us long to bridge the “three-hundred sixty-five days in one year” mantra that was abbreviated by his phone extension. Dr. Propel was ecstatic about this fact and his attempt to hide it from his students erupted in giddy fashion that day in class.

You see, this is one of those trivial moments from college...this, the correct spelling of potentiometer, the inane theme song of Mentos candy, and on and on....

- - - - - - - - - - - -
24/7
(Gerald B/T.J. Jackson/Taryll Jackson)
3T
From the album Brotherhood
1995