It reminded me of Crazy Bob, one of my idols during my freshman year of college. (The other one being Smokey, the huge black man from Louisiana that lived next door and gave me lots of free pot. One time, I told him I wanted to get drunk, but I only had $6. Smokey laughed his hearty southern laugh and replied, "I can get you drunk on $6." Thus began the infamous Mad Dog night. The night ended at noon the next day, when I woke up and it took me an hour to realize that I was pantsless, not of my own volition. But that is another story.) Anyway, Crazy Bob. He was a senior who lived on the top floor of the worst dorm on campus because he forgot to turn in his housing slip. He used to be one of the biggest partiers on campus, well known for his appearance at almost every event that included beer or illicit substances. He was also quite attractive, and a ladies' man. Then he went to China, and once there, he apparently went crazy. Among the many wonderful things that Bob did during his last year of school:

-He helped my friend Ty with some math homework. In return, Ty promised him a beer. This was at about 5 AM, so Ty had obviously meant a beer later, at some point in the future. No. Bob needed to collect that beer immediately. So Bob goes into Ty's darkened room and takes a beer out of the fridge. Right next to the fridge is the slumbering Bryan Dunharm, who hears a rattle near his ear and turns his sleepy head to see what is the matter! He turns to see a Crazy Bob grin! Suddenly, Bob's hands encircle Bryan's throat and he begins choking him! It is 5 AM, and Bob is choking the sleepy Bryan for no durned reason!!

-Everytime I am with Bryan and Crazy Bob is near, Bob threatens to do something violent to Bryan. And threats are all that comes out of his mouth, even while Bryan and I may be having some serious conversation. Sometimes the threats are accentuated by more choking of the Bryan.

-I am reading in my favorite chair at the library, and Bob skitters up and grabs my book. He stares at me, grinning, while he attempts to place my book on the highest bookshelf he can reach. The book keeps falling. Bob tries six times to hide my book on the shelf, until he gives up and tucks it in a crevice of the window. He then skitters away. I can�t reach my book where he put it, and I had to recruit some horribly tall person to retrieve it.

-That same night, I am in the library basement when I spot Crazy Bob by the computer lab. Bob ducks behind a pillar, and then peeks out at me. He says nothing. He grins.

-There is a big cross-dressing party one Saturday night. There is a catwalk. The fun thing to do is to go to these things and wait for the boys to get really drunk, then they start strutting their stuff for everyone to see. It is weird how these tendencies come out. Anyway, there is boy after drunken boy in women�s clothing walking down the catwalk, and the occasional punked out lesbian bitch couples with leashes attached, and then suddenly there is Bob, in his little plaid button down shirt, shoulder bag on, two beers held high in his proud hands, grinning and parading down the catwalk. Bob is dressed as his usual Bob self. Bob usually studies on Saturday nights. Bob occasionally comes out to play, in a big Bob way.

-One day after dinner, Bryan and I are relaxing under the Sitting Tree. It is a huge tree on campus that people chill under and be cool. There are probably various other cool people chilling with us. All of the sudden we hear what can only be a Chinese expletive being shouted by a pair of healthy lungs. BOB IS COMING OUR WAY! All of the sudden he launches into this story, quite out of the blue, about how he learned that phrase from a guy in China. Apparently he was wandering around really drunk one night with another American friend, and he sees this woman getting beat up by this huge beefy man who is about 10 times the size of her. (these are Bob�s descriptions.) So drunken Crazy Bob (before he was crazy? I dunno) decides to rescue this woman, and starts wailing on the guy. Bob is like an average size guy. Big dude and Bob get in a fight. What happens? I have no clue. Bob just all the sudden wanders away. He is wearing his little plaid shirt and carrying his shoulder bag as always. And grinning hugely! We never discovered the outcome of Bob�s drunken battle.

-Also once I was wandering down the loggia, which is narrow and full of bikes, side-by-side with a friend, and we come up on Bob, who is grinning. All the sudden he screams at us "WHY CAN�T YOU GIVE ME SOME FUCKING ROOM TO WALK, FATSOS". Bob did not stop grinning, yet he was irate. Cruel Bob? Crazy Bob.

I had this romantic view of the capers of Crazy Bob until Padraig sent me some horrible, horrible poetry that Bob wrote. It was about love and rocket ships. I got to see the serious, softer side of Bob, that I had hoped did not exist. I wanted him to be a great big ball of insanity, not just some emotional basket-case that expelled all the energy of his angst and rage through comedy!!! From that day forward, I loathed the ground Bob walked on.

Speaking of poetry dampening relationships, I was thinking the other day about a funny episode that also occurred during my first year of college. There was this girl named Liz that I met during the first week, who was possibly the coolest person who ever had a crush on me. She was an ACTIVIST and very cute and made art and wrote really excellent poetry and was very very smart. However, it took me until two years later to realize the crush part in all of this. Also I am not a lesbian? I guess this was the before the War with Acne ravaged my skin and heart and I still took care of myself. Let me recount a specific day of my obliviousity for your reading pleasure:

-Liz spots me smoking outside of my dorm one afternoon. (I had a two-month fling with being a badass at the beginning of college.) "Why don't you come up to my room and umm. Look at some of my poetry? We can listen to music." "OK" sez I. What I am thinking: "HOORAY FOR FRIENDS!!"

-Liz takes me to her messy, yet not-too-messy, messy in a hip sort of way dorm room. Her roommate Claire is laying in bed. Claire smiles at Liz and gets up and leaves. WHAT I AM THINKING: "Where is this Claire leaving to?"

-Liz puts on The Smiths. "I LOVE THE SMITHS" I say. This was before that were 'back in mode', before even ska was popular, and The Smiths were still like sort of retro old-school college rock from the early 90s, like you know all the skinny indie boys in black NIN t-shirts and stuff who liked the Lemonheads and things back then. And flannel and and 80's goth looks. Anyway. We discussed early 90's college rock, the Lemonheads, and Liz was the first person to recommend the Red House Painters to me (this was '96--i just bought an album by them this year). We sat around and smoked a little doobage to the slow sensitive music. What I am thinking: "GEE I LOVE DOOBAGE."

-At one point Liz says out of the blue, "You must get a lot of boyfriends because your boobs are so big." I interpret this now as an attempt to try and identify my sexuality. My reaction then was one of disbelief. "Girl, what do you mean? I fugly." What I am thinking: "DOOBAGE"

-AND THEN THE KICKER. She pulls out her poetry folder and picks a poem to read. She introduces it by saying "I just wrote this one about falling in love with a redhead. I never have before, so I wondered what it would be like." AT THAT POINT, I WAS STILL DYEING MY HAIR RED. I listened to the poem and was all "oh that is nice. oh, i have to go to the library now". WHAT I AM THINKING: "POERMS ARE LOVELY! STUDYTIME! YAY COOL FRIENDS!" How oblivious could I be! I left that day with nary a clue. I didn�t realize until a few months later that another person could actually be interested in me! That is a sad fact. I did not feel human until college! I felt like a foggy uninteresting life-force. BUT NOW I FEEL CRAZED WITH AFFECTION FOR ME!! MWAH TO ME, SEXAY

At any rate, the end of this little anecdote is funny, because it all ended badly. About a week later I visited her again with some of my own poetry, and after reading it, her interest in me severely waned. Clueless as usual, I thought I was a poem pro. However I recently reread my poems from high school, and gosh, what a difference 5 years makes. Would you like to read an example? Oh, I think so.

The ending proper however occurred when she was telling me before fall break that she had an 18 hour plane ride ahead of her. Now, the night before I had been talking to my friend Anny about her trip to Hong Kong for fall break. Anny was going to visit her boyfriend's family. She said the plane ride would be 18 hours. So when Liz mentioned her 18 hour flight, that clicked in my brain and I said "Oh, right, you're going to Hong Kong, huh?" (Understand: health food dog bone. If I can actually say something like that out loud, I am surely capable of other dumb orations.) This is the problem with the situation: Liz is Korean, and a very militant sort of person. (Later in college she became the supreme bitch spokeswoman for gays and lesbians of color on campus. She was notorious for nastiness. Freshman year, however, she was still quite pleasant.) She stared at me with her eyebrows raised and said "I'm not Chinese. I'm KOREAN." and walked away. I knew she was Korean. Liz never even said hi to me again, or acknowledged that she knew me. (I was even at a square dance with her once, DOSIE-DOED WITH HER, and she still ignored me.) I remembered back to Judy Kim, my best friend in 5th grade, who was also Korean. The thing her family hated most was that everyone in my town called them Chinese because the whities were too dumb to know the difference. I felt so awful. But what can you say to rectify these situations? I always end up stammering and hesitating when talking about race, like an upper-middle class racist honky. Fortunately my friends know I hold no malice for any group of people, so even Dena, who is white but hates all white people (at work they call her Dena X, and she loves it), know to take my inarticulateness just as my bad communication skills and nothing offensive. She would be offended, however, if I put cornrows in my hair. GODDARNIT!!!

Finally tonight, here are some fun links that I was looking at before. To relive my night with Poison!! I am so in love with CC Deville, you cannot freakin understand. ALL CRAZY EX-COKEHEADS, COME TO MAMMMMMMMY!

Rikki Rockett�s tour diary!!!! Much of this shit has got to be made up. It is creepy yet strangely arousing!!

I SAW THIS DUDE!! We were all "WHAT THE HELL? A BANANA?" Then I saw some naked boobage.

ROCK STAR COCK! This is an amusing read.