Comic for Thursday, April 12th, 2007

Posted: 12:00 am, Thursday, April 12th

I have forgotten to draw the mustache on Pete in every panel I've drawn since the strip in which I gave him a mustache. Just so you know that.

Today is momentous for several reasons. One is that, in a mere six months, I shall wed fair 2.0 upstate. I'm thinking of adding a wedding page to the horribly ignored Museum section of this site, where we may blog about the home stretch so that no one has to be subjected to what I assume are the boring-to-anyone-who-is-not-us details of the nuptials. I'll see when I get to that. The second thing going on today is that the loverly Princess Di is celebrating a birthday on this day. Happy birthday, man. And the third is that, ten years ago today, was the first Wake that I ever attended. The Wake is - or was, because I think they've more or less kiboshed it - the signature event of the dorm I lived in at Notre Dame, Alumni Hall. When Notre Dame banned kegs on campus in the late 70s, the blessed men of Alumni Hall began holding an Irish Wake for the keg every year. Except that it was not just for the keg, but for everything and everyone that died in the course of the previous year. So the basic idea was that we'd spend all day Saturday decorating the hallways to the theme of whatever we decided we would 'honor' as a section, and then our dates (it was obstentatiously a dance) would show up and we'd all get roaring drunk and then pizza would always show up at some point (fuck yes, do we know how to party). The decorations were epic. The year Orville Redenbocker died (before my time), they filled a hallway with two feet of popcorn. The year Uncle Jesse died, the dudes in that hallway went to some farm in Indiana and got haybales. They bought a chicken, too, but Father George, our rector, told them they couldn't have it (probably for the best). There were always really lame ones - one year, the goobers who thought they were hot shit because they played football or something in high school Waked "Catholic school" so that all their dates had to wear Catholic schoolgirl outfits. Our sophomore year, the weenie freshmen my boys lived amongst decided to Wake "Weekend at Bernie's" so that they could have a Hawaiian theme. As it was 1998 at the time, that was the lamest thing I ever heard. And someone Waked OJ, who is still alive. But then there were good ones, like Sonny Bono, where they piped I Got You Babe into the hallway on repeat all night, and had a huge tree branch wedged floor-to-ceiling with a dummy on the ground nearby, wearing skis. Wilt Chamberlin was Waked, and the hallway was wallpapered with Victoria's Secret pages, around a bed at the end of the hallway with a dummy with a huge erection. But, as biased as I am, I hold that our freshman and junior years were the best Wake jobs I've ever seen.

• Freshman year: Ten years ago today, we woke up early and began wallpapering the hallways with cut-up black garbage bags and covering the overhead lights with black construction paper, tossing papers and wrappers everywhere, and littering the floor with empties. Baggies were filled with powder and put next to dummies and masking-tape body outlines. We took apart several beds and put the frames/mattresses in the hallway. A somewhat-convincing garbage-barrel fire was concocted. The weird juniors who never talked to us somehow presented not just tires but actual car wheels out of their room (I've never figured this one out). My police light actually came in handy for the first time ever. We drank 40s all night. And we played East Coast rap all night long. Because we were Waking Notorious BIG. And the hallway next to us was Waking Tupac, so we had to hate them all night. I really can't express how much it looked like a ghetto in our hallway that night. At one point, the guys in the dorm next door pulled our fire alarm and campus firemen came. "This place is one huge fire hazard," they said. Of course, Reggie played Soundgarden all night because they had broken up two days before.
• Junior year: Above everything else, this is probably what will get me sent to hell eventually. We Waked Kosovo. We made a minefield, a shantyville, a sniper's nest, a crashed plane, bombers from overhead, and a military checkpoint (manned by No Jeans! man). It was expertly done. Father George made us put up a sign saying that we were really Waking peace in Kosovo, and somehow trying to bring attention to the plight of ethnic Albanians (because all the drunken maniacs running around that night would surely give two shits about being enlightened about atrocities). Our sign read something like, "None of us find anything humorous in the genocide of ethnic Albanians. Except for Sweaty." Father George eventually made us cross that out, too, because Sweats had just been made an RA.

Ah. Thank you for allowing me that trip down memory lane. That was a good, good time.

Lily Allen was evidently on All Songs Considered's 9:30 Club a week or so ago - you can check her out here, and you really should. Her album's damn catchy. And the Arcade Fire's concert from two months ago is here, too.. I hope it's still online. I dunno, music music music.

Now that I know that the Sox wound up winning the Series in 1967, I'm looking forward to following this blog. That's right, a blog about a pennant race that took place 40 years ago. The internet is a strange and magnificent place.

Just watched Lost (I know, during its original broadcast slot! The hell!), and I *knew* Sayid should've shot Juliette. Eh. Anyway, PVP, with one of my favorite strips of theirs (his) of late, really nails Lost.

Damn shame about Matsuzaka last night, but fuck if King Felix ain't the real deal. God, that kid just turned 21 the other day. That drives me nuts.

bullfrog

1997 wake - heaven's gate (crazy cult people) 1998 wake - princess diana 1999 wake - Actually, i don't remember. I remember jj's brother was in seriously bad shape and we almost had an actual dead body on our hands to wake. Wait, didn't I live across the hall from you when we were juniors? I don't remember waking kosovo. 2000 wake - wilt chamberlain

I also remember uh, what's his name? Jon? wanting to wake jean benet and colombine which somehow crossed the line and necessitated the NO MINORS rule. Good times.

MJL's roommate, yeah. John something or other.

I lived in third floor Chapel Alley junior year, you were across from RAW and those guys. We were down there all the time, though, so it's an easy mistake. I believe you guys waked 80s party drugs that year. There were a lot of Mike n Ikes around.

You were up in our room a lot during the Kosovo wake, because I have pictures of you and MNP in her leather dress... doing peppermint patties? I don't really think that's accurate - Reggie Ho and I had a peppermint patty disaster in our room during the freshman year Wake to the nature of forbidding peppermint patties to take place in our room for the rest of our career.

Kurt Vonnegut died this morning. Read his book Slaughterhouse Five as a College Freshman. Very interesting read.

Oh, no shit? Huh. I'll pour a 40 for him later. He was never my favorite, but the guy was a helluva writer. Mother Night was awesome.

Digression: For some reason, I saw "Can't Hardly Wait" in the theaters with two of my friends one summer when I was home from collitch. Among its litany of sins (the major one being it sucked), the film somehow posited that the main character, who was a total schmuck and kept referencing strawberry pop-tarts and Barry Manilow's "Mandy," was going to some workshop taught by Kurt Vonnegut. Why I remember various plot points of "Can't Hardly Wait" so well, I have no idea.

Do you remember that dude in writing class that used Seymour Fish as his protagonist and had an obsession with duck sauce? Total Vonnegut rip off.

I don't remember peppermint patties from senior year. I do remember SKT and I going to a lot of trouble stealing an inflatable alligator. I don't know who they were waking since it was a good 6 years before Steve Irving met the sting ray.

Thank you, that dress was (is, I still own it!) PLEATHER, not leather. I don't think they sold real leather in Budapest in 1999.

Oh, and Jr year Grafe was drinking Unicum bombs sent over from Hungary by the always-thoughtful Ryan (who I believe got a tattoo while the Wake was going on since he couldn't be drinking in the dorm)

Yeah, I've told 2.0 the story about that wanker several times. This kid wrote the same rip-off of "The Lottery" in two classes that Grafe and I had with him, had a ponytail, and for some reason included in his bio in the lit mag we all got published in that he "has already been honored in a Notre Dame commencement, as his mother was carrying him when she graduated in 1977." Way to tell everyone your mom got knocked up in collitch, man. For the record, my bio read that I was one of the most important religious leaders of the 20th century, and Grafe's said that his proudest achievement in collitch was learning how to juggle.

And sensitive ponytail boy wasn't even the worst. There was the chick who kept writing stories about girls that weren't as good as everyone thought they were (we get it! you're a slut! move on!); there was Randy, the guy who earnestly explained that his Rashoman rip-off of a hold-up story was about how everyone perceives things differently; there was "j.l.", as he signed his stories, whose male characters always broke down and cried about five times a story and who set everything in Colorado Springs; and then there was Wes, this ankh-wearing wanker who pensively tilted his head back and held his hands in kind of a prayer-position with only the fingertips touching as he critiqued everyone's stories, calling most of them lowbrow (his critique of one of my stories, starring the Five Bucks gang in a prose version of their adventure in the Museum, actually, was, 'the word that comes to mind is spectacle'). This Wes dude then wrote a story about zombies. Not metaphorical zombies in the Romero sense. Just zombies. I couldn't fucking believe it.

God, creative writing.

I was wrong, E, the peppermint patties must've been the Unicum bombs. God, that stuff was brutal. But that's how awesome the Wake was - MNP came all the way from Budapest for the Wake.

It was the Unicum that made me walk MNP back to my dorm in her stocking feet in the snow. I swear.

Clearly, I went to the wrong university as an undergrad. How Notre Dame is not on the top ten party schools from reading these tales, I'll never know. (Wisconsin? Wisconsin?)

Because we have single-sex dorms and a curfew that they actually *mean.* The course load prevents daily rocking, which I have heard is not so much the case in Wisconsin. And the alteration of choice is beer - there's a drug scene, but not to the extent of most collitches.

sorry, e. you and i didn't wrangle gaters in alumni at the sr. year wake. i was in cincinnati that weekend.

but your lapse in memory makes me feel better - i can't remember a darn thing about the wake junior year and i *know* i was at that one - there are pictures. and i have a vague sense that i was nearly trampled by the pallbearers and coffin

Dangerous, SKT. That coffin is friggin heavy, with or without Fr. George in it.

I recall Drew being fine, but his buddy Joe was unresponsive for an uncomfortable period of time. I have a picture of the two of them trying to drink from the same blender at the same time, and the mysterious red goo about to spill out right in between them.

DiCarlo Armanetti Liquors, right here in the north burbs of Chicago, does indeed carry Unicum, complete in its grenade-shaped bottle.

JP Huston was one odd duck. Encyclopedic knowledge of all things Cobain, and extremely talented on the gee-tar.

Oddest Freshman year pairing? Jason Jorski and John Barry have to be pretty near the top of the list. (For the non-domers still following: we were all assigned random roomies as frosh, no exceptions.)

Everyone read that right - pallbearers and coffin. Oh, God, do I miss the Wake.

Jorski, that shady little man, lived on my floor for several weeks following the sophomore year Wake, when he and the Bizzo got into a fistfight afterwards, resulting in the breaking of an aquarium with, I believe, Jorski's face. Or maybe the doorknob was what cut Jorski's face. I don't recall. Whooooo, the Wake!

http://www.internetwines.com/rws25249.html

MNP - what were you thinking? =)

"The ultimate digestive miracle." This explains much.

Blame Ryan! I was acting as UPS on that one.

Although I have a bottle on my shelf at home...it's 10 years aged, too, which should make it even MORE potent.

Have you put prunes in it? That's apparently the thing to do. Sounds like the world's worst firecherry.

Bullfrog, for your wedding I will bring you your very own homemade batch of prunes in Unicum. And 2.0 will then be allowed to hate me forever.

On a what-will-they-think-of-next note...I think all offices should have at least one of these, don't you? http://www.tomballhatchet.com/hamstershredder.html

SKT, it must have been Creany that helped me tame the gator, but I thought she was otherwised engaged for a brief period of time - or was *that* junior year. Oh the lost brain cells....

Anyone else thirsting for a 40 at 4 this afternoon - with all this nostogia?

I'm definitely going home tonight and looking through some photo albums. Whether or not to let Mr. MNP see is another story...

INTERGALACTIC PLANETARY PLANETARY INTERGALACTIC

I'm sorry, non-Domers, we'll be back to the normal day-by-day crap around here tomorrow. I promise.

Did they own any other cd's? That was the only one i ever heard. And that guy who sung off-key.

Wesley Willis. He's dead now.

Intergalactic was the kickoff to 40s at 4 every week. That and the airhorn into the quad.

God, I miss collitch. I could not be more sad to be at work right now.

I am I the only one who hears Interglactice and immediately has an image of RAW or Leahy (in cow suit) in the window!!?!?

No.

I don't mind the whole Notre Dame Alumni thing. At least I know what to expect if I end up going to get my Ph.D. there.

I don't even get an RIP? I put out such hits as "Shoot me in the Ass" and "Mark Nyder" and you guys can't even give me a shout out?

Rock over London. Rock on Chicago. Budweiser it's the King of Beers.

P.S. It was Leahy in the cow outfit.

Check out wesley willis' wikipage. Amazing amount of information.

Didn't he have a song (or several songs) in which he threatened to kick Batman and Alice in Chains asses?

What you did was excessive and extreme!