I'd be remiss if I didn't link this post-haste. (via LGM)
future lead singer of the J. Geils Band
There was a time when the name would be sufficient. There was a time when I could remember the name.
Wolf. There, done without cheating, if it's right. Maybe two 'f's. Peter Wolff? Yecch.
Now I'll follow the link.
All guys. That sucks.
It did remind me to try to find Frank O'Hara Meditations online somewhere.
Ving Rhames and Stanley Tucci doesn't surprise.
I hated my roommates; our entire class hated one of them.
OT:
I have been hiking. I saw a bear!
My freshman roommate -- widely considered one of the most annoying people in our class, so very much so the she gave herself a nickname (of which she was proud) based on this -- found me impossible and moved out within two weeks. My friends loved this.
My friend K had a roommate who became a national news story for a racially insensitive stunt she pulled (whose locus was their dorm room) and who then wrote a mega hit movie.
5: Was it the ol' Confederate-flag-in-the-window bit?
They never stop running some old favorites. There was a Confederate flag imbecile in a neighboring dorm when I was in college. The flag-waver got a great deal of attention.
My freshman roommate was my first real encounter with someone from an old-money Southern Democrat family. He represented pretty much every single U.Va. fratboy stereotype you can conjure up, and his reign of terror culminated one night when my then-girlfriend was visiting. He came in at 3am and soon commenced a most voluminous (in decibels and ounces) vomiting session with the vom fountain spraying mostly into the space between his bed and the wall. The smell forced us to flee for the night, and an understanding friend luckily woke up to offer us a spot on her floor. God, what a juice bag.
5: I take it the roommate wrote the movie under a different name?
Not to state the obvious, but Eraserhead guy? Really? Wow.
My freshman roommates (well, from my first, abortive semester, anyhow) sucked. If I'd stuck it out, I probably would have been roommates with The Editors, which would have been awesome. That's pretty much who I spent all my time hanging out with, in any case. We sat in the cafeteria and made fun of everybody. Also, we drank.
If vomming fountainously makes one a bad roommate, well then I don't want to be right.
I had a bad roommate once who put post-it notes on me when the spirits had brought me low, rather than being kind and giving me his soda.
I shared a flat with someone from a moderately well-known band, which I've mentioned before, otherwise, no-one well-known. I had a German flatmate in my first year who had friends who dressed in dubiously neo-Nazi sorts of ways [although I think this was a gay thing, rather than an actual Nazi thing] and who lived up to every British stereotype about Germans, ever.*
One flatmate I had was captain of the university rugby team. A lovely guy although many of the rugby player clichés are true. Terrible things were done to him after he admitted he pissed the bed while drunk [his room was secretly broken into and his bed 'pre-wet' more than once].
* I lived in the accommodation for 'foreigners' so had flatmates from about 7 different nationalities.
14: I'm trying to figure out what style of dress simultaneously says both"gay" and "neo-Nazi.". Bad German fashion sense more generically,n I am familiar with.
My roommates were all lovely.
My freshman year roommate was a football player. Nice guy, but we really didn't have much in common.
OMG, ttaM -- did they put you with the "foreigners" because you are Scottish?
15: I personally am picturing something like The Nihilists from The Big Lebowski.
My freshman roommate makes his living selling semen.
19: I think that's a step up from selling blood plasma.
Actually a rather large step, apparently. (It's not his semen.) (And I haven't talked to the guy in 25 years.)
Donny: Are these the Nazis, Walter?
Walter Sobchak: No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there's nothing to be afraid of.
23: See, when God made men's wee-wees he had more than one purpose in mind.
How is my fair homestate treating you, Teo?
22: Bulls'.
23: I really don't want to know.
Anyway, the guy was pretty much a dick at 19, and information revealed by a quick Googling doesn't give a lot of grounds to suspect that he's gotten any less dickish as he got older and richer.
28 to 26, although I suppose it works to 27 as well.
I had a roommate who asked me how I was able to remember anything I was reading since I was turning pages so quickly. He only lasted a year, but when my parents had carpenter ants, he took care of them. I had another roommate who dropped a full keg on his foot.
any less dickish
Are you kidding? The guy sells semen for a living. He's a dixpert.
Should have said it doesn't look like he's any less full of bull.
Takes a bull-headed man to see the pearl in the rocky mountain oyster.
My freshman-year roommate bore an uncanny resemblance to Bernini's David.
I believe I've mentioned that the director of the choir I used to sign with roomed at Oxford with Tobias Wolff, who borrowed details from his roommate's childhood for This Boy's Life.
It's amazing how few of the people on that roommate list are even vaguely familiar to me.
OT, but I just tuned into "Glee," which multiple friends of mine have said was like the awesomest show ever. And I'm perplexed as, near as I can tell, it's essentially just a giant high school feel good cliche where we all are comforted to realize that the "cool" jocks are really just pathetic losers and the pathetic geeks are really the ones we all wish we could be. The first half hour or so that I missed must have been the super amazing part, right?
Also, another roommate of mine was played by Steve Zahn in a movie.
35: Di, I am assuming you have seen Camp?
36: you were roommates with Monty the Alley Cat?
35 The first half hour or so that I missed must have been the super amazing part, right?
Not as far as I can recall. (I watched the pilot whenever it first aired.) I think the only appeal was in hearing "Don't Stop Believing" performed by people who weren't drunk.
39: ? well yeah. You thought I started posted there because I had something compelling to say?
38: Exactly. Nice guy, but his breath was just awful.
"started posted": again I prove my point.
Most of my college roommates are trying to become academics. A couple of them got computer programming jobs in the Bay Area instead. I'm not entirely sure they didn't have the right idea.
46: hard to imagine. I'm far too lazy.
I like how 12 remains ambiguous about whether The Editors is one person or multiple people.
36: the guy in the Vietnam prison camp?
36: I am betting the business journalist from Shattered Glass.
50: Aaaand if that is too à point feel free to excise.
My keg dropping roommate also was in shattered glass. In a dorm, in which he did not reside, at 1:00 in the morning. When the police came the two days later, they were very nice about it.
50: Trust oudemia to get it right.
My first year roommate left after a week or two, leaving me with two halves of a single all to myself. That was nice; he was not, even in the small dose I experienced. Sophomore year I roomed with someone who went on to row on the Olympic team. Great guy, if a bit too fit and good looking for the purposes of boosting my self-esteem by comparison. I'm pretty sure he's a botanist now. Junior and senior years I lived alone/with one significant other or another. I wish I could say I miss college. I do miss graduate school, odd as that may sound.
I sure don't miss college. So far I'm liking grad school much more.
my dad was HS roommates with al gore at st. alban's. he has nothing but nice things to say about him.
My first college roommate situation was with a rapping Marxist Quaker from Kansas and a future well-received novelist, both of whom I remain friends with today. There were also three cats who came with the room, one of whom only had three legs, another of whom someone admitted to having a crush on in a national publication.
When I transferred, my suite-mate was an aspiring astronaut who covered our common room with space posters before I showed up. I decided to roll with it. It was pretty cool.
rapping Marxist Quaker from Kansas and a future well-received novelist,
I was hoping this was one person.
re: 15
There's a particular skinhead look that could be either in certain subcultures. Tight jeans, Dr Marten boots, white t-shirt, shaved head, etc. This guy also had little gold rimmed glasses exactly like the guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and rocked a green nylon bomber jacket, which pushed the whole look a bit more into 'Nazi'.
http://www.dubskin.com/skinhead_101.htm
re: 17
No, this was _in_ Scotland. The foreign students had been moved into a particular accomodation block when it was partly finished as they HAD to have somewhere to stay when term started. A few weeks later they moved a bunch of Scottish students in when they finished the other buildings. There were some complaints by the foreign students that they would like to have Scottish (aka 'English' speaking) flatmates, so there was some shuffling around done to integrate the existing foreign students with the new Scottish students. So my flat was Belgian, Basque, Spanish, German, and Scots, and the flats directly above and below us, with whom we hung out, had Italians, more Belgians, an Egyptian, couple of Japanese, etc.
I liked being an undergraduate, and really enjoyed my 'Masters' [i.e. the bee phil], but didn't enjoy doctoral study much [too much time alone].
McQueen was roommates with Ad/m P/n/nb/erg? I know that dude! He used to cover cDc.
The guy in the room directly above me currently went to my primary school. This wouldn't be interesting (in NZ), were it not for the fact it has taken near 9 months for me to twig.
No, this was _in_ Scotland.
Ahhh. That makes much more sense! But it was cracking me up to imagine the English putting all the Scots in international student housing.
re: 62
Depending on if there's a referendum next year, that might be a reality!
My freshman roommate was from a place which had been on the losing side of a notoriously deadly civil war several years earlier. It gave him an interesting perspective on many of the things he encountered in American college life. Sadly, I spent most of the time embroiled in my own stupid and petty mishegas and never maintained contact with him beyond college.
|| Oh dear. A fellow with whom I went to highschool and who is now an essentially non compos tweaker is putting pix of his meth-making up on Facebook. It's like my own Breaking Bad! |>
||
I can't believe that, during my longest/purest offline period in years, you all managed to have threads on pie, architecture, and urban cycling.
For the record, AB has a well- worn rant on why there should be no strawberry in rhubarb pies.
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I'm grading a pretest. One of the fill-in-the-blank questions asks "The notation (a,b) means that the interval _______ the endpoints, and the notation [a,b] means that the interval ______ the endpoints."
This student wrote discludes/includes. Sure, why not.
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Quick someone! Throw up a post on precocious children and Greek mythology!
You know, there is a standing offer for post submissions.
Also, despite going to a school with a prominent drama program and leading schools of computing n robotics n shit, I don't know anyone who's gone on to any sort of renown (one classmate was in the NYT in an article about architects getting work designing their parents' vacation houses. Doesn't count).
71: Someone -- Who? Someone I know well? Can't remember! -- was telling me that Eth/n H/wk/ was for a matter of weeks their freshman roomie at your alma mater. He left to make Dead Poets.
Just come out and say he left to kill poets, oud. Don't beat around the bush.
That's not necessarily what she meant. Some countries have poets on their currency.
My freshman roommate was one of the most promiscuous women at school and as a result, practically every weekend I ended up sleeping on a bean bag in my other friend's room. Other than that, she was a great roommate. Unfotunately, over summer, her mom caught her having sex with some guy at home and pulled her out of school so she could go to college at home where her mom could keep more of an eye on her.
Oh yeah, I used to be in an amateur theatre group where several of the members later ended up in TV shows, etc. None of them properly famous, though, just relatively minor parts in things, afaik.
My first roommate (post&en;local-community-college- from-home, so not really the same) was a crazy drunk. I was far from sober, be he was the kind who behaved in a way that made friends tell him to stop drinking. He did, and he's now the owner/editor of a small poetry press.
My most famous roommate was the singer that the record company foisted on an instrumental metal band for an album. He says it was a great way to see Italy.
over summer, her mom caught her having sex with some guy at home and pulled her out of school so she could go to college at home where her mom could keep more of an eye on her
This sounds like some crazy over-parenting for a college-aged kid.
Perhaps it was a response to a pattern of behavior.
One of my friends in college went on the run for several decades after a "political" bank robbery went awry.
My roommate was a champion cock-teaser; I'd come back from the library to find her in the lounge and some blue-balled guy in her bed. Housing let me out of my contract when I explained that, otherwise, I'd have to kill her. She stripped down in front of her next roommate's father, telling him 'If you like what you see, you can pay me for it'.
My former brother-in-law moved in to his dorm room late at night and didn't turn any lights on, because his roommate was sleeping. He awoke to find a picture of McCarthy on the wall. Joe McCarthy. His roommate kept staring at him intently and finally explained he was looking for the BiL's horns, what with the BiL being Jewish...
Perhaps it was a response to a pattern of behavior.
Still, at that age?
Maybe she was having boatloads of sex because she had the type of mom who would overreact if she found out about a single tugboat of sex.
If you're having boatloads of sex then you sure ain't me-o!
It's very hard to have sex with a mermaid. They're like the ultimate virgin.
92: I like to get them really hot for me, to the point where they want to give up their entire life and undersea adventures in order to be with me, and then, after they undergo an incredibly painful -- and heavyhandedly metaphorical -- transition to human, dump them.
Can mermaids be technical virgins? Do they have butts?
92: There's a Lon Chaney movie like that. Well, not exactly like that.
Continuing with complaints about roommates, I really don't like how the wireless router and modem is in my other roommates room. The damn thing needs to be recycled practically daily (I think it's the router, which is crap, that's the problem).
You have DSL, eb? Could be misconfigured for your line.
Or wait or maybe you have that fucked up Canadian internet.
What do you mean by misconfigured? I think it's cable, anyway.
From 96:
"Noah Cutter is a scarred inside and out hero who has a heart full of love for his wife."
I like to read this as a scared inside, and an out hero, who still has a heart full of love for his wife.
102: if it's cable it's irrelevant. With DSL a lot of times the reason the modem will drop the signal is that the TTL or some kinda shit is set for a connection higher than the line can handle.
The "or some kinda shit" should inform you that I'm being a little hand-wavey, but anyhow you don't have DSL.
103: being scarred inside is no joke. Even if you're out and proud, people tend to look askance at rectal bleeding.
"This is actually a fantasy novel, but there's a strong romantic thread. Regardless, Rupert is one of my favorite heroes ever after reading this book. He can ride a unicorn, so he definitely qualifies for this list."
Wait. Not disqualifies?
106: if he'd ridden the unicorn like that he'd be scarred inside.
Can you ride a unicorn? Thought not.
We found out last night that our baby-sitter attends a high school whose mascot is The Unicorns. We were duly impressed.
My freshman year, a girl always hung around our floor thought the notion of "riding a unicorn" was the funniest thing ever. She must have asked two dozen people (in my presence) if they were able to ride a unicorn, during one three-month period. LOL, it's code for something else!
In related news I can easily imagine how pulling a person of that age away from a boarding college, and back to a lower-priced college where the parents would not have to pay for room and board and constantly wonder if the child was wasting all of their tuition money as well, might not be "crazy over-parenting".
If I catch wind that my kid, in her first year of study, yatters on about unicorns to the annoyance of her dorm and such, sure, I'll be distressed, but I won't pull her out of school for it. I don't want to listen to that duff at home!
66: 64: Atlanta?
Biafra, actually.
Regarding my promiscuous roommate--it was a little over-parenting--her mother was wicked controlling, but my friend also had like a 1.8 that semester as a sociology major, so mom was just looking for an excuse to yank her back. Spring semester she stopped going to class and stayed int eh room all the time, smoking cigs and fucking guys. Ironically, all of her friends at the time also blamed her mom for this because wicked controlling mom had completely supervised promiscuous roommate's (p.r.) study habits in high school. Basically, without her mom there to force her to study and not fuck guys, p.r. just fell apart. She did manage to graduate from college when she went to school in the same city as her mom and is now a productive member of society--mom, kids, job, etc.
No love for Somerby?
Sort of a freshman roommate story- one of mine (call him Bill) is a stereotypical math nerd genius, started MIT at 16 or so and taking junior physics classes his first year. Really smart, not very social.
About 8 years later my wife and I are getting a ride from one of her coworkers. Coworker thinks I'm smart because I do all this science stuff in grad school. He's interviewing roommates around that time, and says that he finally met someone smarter than me and describes him approximately as I did above (really smart, math/physics grad student, not social.) I say, "Oh, is that Bill?" which it was, which then convinces coworker that there is only one guy smarter than me in the Boston area because I know exactly who and where he is.
And one day, when he least expects it...