Why’s it gotta be dark?

It’s the hallway of doom!

Sunday was Halloween, and here at USC, that made this weekend a little bit different than most weekends – this time, USC students can blame a holiday for their hangovers come Monday morning.

But besides the inevitable dress-up and drink-up charades, there’s another major thing USC does for Halloween. New Residential College, my dorm, is one of the buildings that hosts “Spirits of Troy,” a haunted house, trick-or-treat deal for the kids in the surrounding neighborhoods. This is because the surrounding neighborhoods are, as I’ve probably established by now, not quite conducive for young children to be running around at night in. Trick or treating at some random house would probably net you a belly full of buckshot, or some other potentially deadly and not at all treat-like reward for your efforts.

Our floor was quite jazzed up for Spirits, because it’s an excuse for us to go ape and decorate the hall into a haunted house. We put garbage bags to dim the unearthly fluorescents that can apparently never be turned off. People got up on chairs and streamed long strings of spider webs and the like to sufficiently frighten little children by vaguely irritating their face with invisible thread. The themes to scary movies (C’mon, this is the Cinema Floor, after all) blared from speakers. Overall, it was fairly spooktastic, and the stage was set for some massive scaring later on that night. Some people dressed up as characters from the Japanese phenomenon, Battle Royale. Others went more conventional routes, including but not limited to tall German butchers, hobbits, and probably even hobbit butchers (hobbits that ran the deli in the Shire, not people who went around and speared hobbits for sport).

Needless to say, although impressive, the haunted house we came up with could not match the sheer terror offered by Alex, Ryan, Kevin, and the gang back when we were doing YMCA’s for Halloween at Lakeside. These guys were veritable low-budget haunted house craftsmen who would build elaborate cardboard box mazes, which basically forced kids to crawl through them so that they could be assaulted and grabbed through secret compartments. In many ways, it was the Neverland Ranch that never was. While I palmed coins and the like, Kevin donned a depraved old man mask and would play the "dead body" in the Haunted House that would grab ahold of little kids as they walked by. They either screamed their little kid heads off, wet themselves, or bit Kevin as hard as they could. I’m sure Kevin would agree that any injuries sustained in the line of volunteer duty were well worth it.

It’s the doorway of doom!

In mid-afternoon, Max and I loaded into the Wongmobile and headed to the La Cienga Walmart to pick up much needed spooking supplies (Scary masking tape, and scary tinfoil). If you’re ever on a nationwide tour of “Most Depressing Stores,” be sure to check out the La Cienga Walmart, which is three floors of fluorescent depravity rolled into a nice package of discounted goods and employees hiding between shelves trying to avoid working (a couple of them were in the shoe aisles. A supervisor came by and yelled at them in both English and Spanish. I guess to have to be bilingual to be a supervisor at Walmart). We headed over also to pick up the new Grand Theft Auto game for Ryan on the 2nd floor. Max pointed out the irony of driving around the unsavory part of Los Angeles to pick up a game where you drive around the unsavory part of Los Angeles, but we chose to pay it no heed and pressed ever onwards.

We got back with the needed supplies and the floor was ready to go. At about five-thirty, kids starting filing around and trick-or-treating on dorm doors, and things were starting heat up.

Then the damn fire alarm went off.

Its ear-piercing shriek gave the kids on the floor a good jump, but delightful fright turned to downtrodden disappointment as the building evacuated into the cool Los Angeles night. We stood around idly demanding who had, in fact, ruined Halloween. Adam, the RA for the first floor, noted that the fire department was a lot slower this time in responding.

That’s right – the fire alarm going off has happened three times this year already, and we’re hardly halfway through the first term. Last time it happened (a few weeks ago), some idiot decided that three in the morning was a great time to pull it, and we froze our asses off outside for one and a half hours as the firemen went to each and every door, unlocked it, checked for people inside, and wrote up anybody who was still there (they prefer to be asleep when they burn to death). To add insult to injury, they didn’t even reach the third floor because they figured that doing the entire building (there are many many people) was impossible, which means I could’ve slept through it just fine. If this fire alarm thing keeps up, the LAFD will probably eventually ignore the inevitable massive firestorm kills a quarter of the freshman population of USC. Needless to say, the entire building has been itching to find out who’s been pulling these alarms so we can exact glorious revenge.

But this time, it was apparently some moron on the first floor who thought “Hay guys! I know what is a great way to spice up a party! Let’s use a fog machine! No way those will set off the alarm!” Even worse, the same thing happened several years ago, exact same circumstances with the fog machine and all. And to add the diarrhea icing to the shit cake that’s been built up, the fire department told us that all the decorations we’d spent the entire day putting up had to be torn down because they were fire hazards, else we’d face stiff fines.

So the hall was torn down back to it’s former, bland, soulless glory, and there were far fewer kids parading around for Halloween tonight (they figured that they might as well go to the other buildings). This is especially a shame because of the effort the fourth floor placed on their haunted house. They had a whole routine set-up and everything, and I know that if I was a little kid going through it, I’d probably would have plopped my ass right in the middle of the hallway and started bawling, or perhaps if provoked bit my way through to the exit.

Basically, it was pretty much the worst Halloween ever.

But let us not dawdle on these depressing matters. Would Tommy Trojan sit around and sob about ruined Halloweens? Hell no – he’d be up raping and pillaging with the rest of them. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me introduce USC’s mascot to you.

It’s the USC Mascot of doom!

Our mascot is the Trojan Warrior, affectionately dubbed Tommy Trojan. Most colleges go with animals, but we decided to go with an ancient warrior with a penchant for falling for a big wooden horse that couldn’t possibly be hollow and filled with soldiers. Seriously, what the hell. Are you going to tell me none of the Trojans, upon seeing the massive horse, tried tapping it? When they were wheeling it in, nobody said “Hay guys! If dis horse iz hollow, den why iz it so heavy?” Basically, our mascot is a huge moron. Also, a condom is named after him.

Which is, of course, an interesting parable if you choose to pursue it. If going by history, I can’t see why anyone would use the Trojan condom. It implies that you’re going to enter the city gates, and when she least expects it, hordes of sperm will bust out and go apeshit. I’m sure that’s a pleasant thought in the midst of passionate lovemaking. Some of the folks on campus have capitalized on this relationship between the condom and our mascot, printing T-shirts that say, on the front “Practice safe sex,” and “Make love with a Trojan” on the back, which, if a girl is wearing it, is like an open invitation for roofies.

The Trojans, USC’s football team, is the #1 ranked team in the Nation, and according to many, expected to have an undefeated season. Basically, they’re expected to deliver cans of whoop-ass like the Salvation Army delivers Campbell’s to the hungry. Despite a few close calls, this has been the case throughout the season. The Daily Trojan dedicates several pages to talking about the game, what could have been better, what should be done next time, and why the Trojans are the best team ever.

The Trojan marching band (also among the best in the nation), accompanies the football team wherever they may go. The band had an impromptu demonstration at the beginning of the school year. There were a lot of people playing clarinets in that band. Too many for any respectable band to have. I’m talking rows upon rows of clarinetists here. I have difficulty deducing where the humble clarinet fits in a school brass marching band, but I suppose when you’re #1, you can have whatever damn instruments you damn well want in your band.

Trojan fans line up for games like it is nobody’s business!

The end result of this is a wholesome amount of school pride. Our school chant is “fight on,” which has been perhaps an unsportsmanlike chant when half of the football stadium is shouting it when the score is 49 – 0 in our favor. “Fight on, even when the enemy is dying on the ground,” perhaps. Of course, in that situation, the slogan may have very well been directed for the other team, “Fight on, because if we beat you 49-0, it’d be a damn boring game and a damn shame for your football program.”

“Fight On” is accompanied by a hand signal. The V for victory is proudly flashed and rocked out. Or the peace sign. Or the bunny ears symbol. Whichever you choose to see the USC Hand Signal as, anybody can derive an inordinate amount of glee when half the stadium is making peace signs, and if one assumes that the all these people are, in fact, disguised picture-happy Japanese tourists.

Despite Trojan Pride being a necessary requirement for enrollment at USC, I regret to say that I do not have much of it. It’s hard to get behind a mascot that basically wears a skirt and a fruity helmet. The school colors, cardinal and gold, are not far off from Lakeside’s maroon and gold, except that, of course, cardinal is a significantly less fruity and easier defined color than “maroon.” Seeing as the school’s entire life force revolves around the pigskin, I can’t say that I’m into it all that much.

I mean, I enjoy sweaty guys bumping and getting all over each other as much as the next straight guy, but the investment most folks put in the game is substantial. On the pirate music networks on the campus subnet, you have people who are sharing the recorded albums of the marching band. They probably all have season DVD’s or something that they can play between games, and sleep on huge, USC football themed bedsheets, and wear USC sweatshirts and pray every night before they go to sleep to a large framed picture of the USC tight ends or something. Honestly, I’m not ready for that level of commitment to a group of people that, if provoked, could all equally kick my ass soundly into next week.

Sometimes, even Johnny Law needs to step in with his deadly index finger gun.

This loyalty to the school colors and mascot extends beyond just sports. Our meal plans are given “Cardinal” and “Trojan” monikers. The Cardinal Plan, which is what I have, is decidedly a rip off by all means, but gives you just enough food to make it through the week. The Trojan plan, which is even more of a rip off, gives you enough food to feed a small, starving African country. Unfortunately at USC, there is nothing in between “almost starving” and “pure gluttony.”

Most people who go for the Trojan Meal Plan either have to have Maintenance come by their dorm room and enlarge their door for them and install structural supports on their beds, or have parents who want them to be well fed, and don’t mind shelling out twice as much money. The Trojan Plan allows unlimited cafeteria visits (The Cardinal plan gives you 10 a week), and an absurd amount of Dining Dollars, which can be spent at retail food locations around campus.

I have heard that most of the time, it is nearly impossible to get rid of those Dining Dollars, and since they don’t roll over from semester to semester, it is in one’s best interest to spend as much as possible whenever one has the chance. As a result, during the week before the end of the semester, it is not an uncommon sight to find students rolling massive cartons full of bottled water, or buying every flavor of Sobe (even the gross ones!) in the refrigerator in an effort to get their money’s worth. I have yet to witness this phenomenon, but when I do, I’ll be sure to bum some free food and beverage off these poor, poor children and their surplus money.

Everyone’s Kitchen. Really. Sucks.

There are two main cafeterias on campus that you can visit with the meal plans. Parkside is all the way across campus (a ten minute walk). Everyone’s Kitchen (EVK) is right downstairs. Parkside is miles above EVK in terms of food quality, but it’s not ten-minute walk better, which means most of the folks on our floor end up eating downstairs.

The food at EVK can be summed up into two kinds: insipid or nauseating. Very occasionally is there truly good quality food. At the very least, you can’t fault EVK’s variety. It is a fairly large room. Immediately on your left is the Mexican cart, with nacho cheese and soy chicken and chips for making nachos or disgusting vegetarian Mexican cuisine (which, in all honesty, should not exist, seeing as con carne is a staple of any respectable Mexican’s diet). In front of that is the We Hate Atkins cart, full of pasta and a pile of stale baked potatoes. To the right is a sandwich cart that is full of sandwich making ingredients with unknown expiration dates. One of these days, I’m sticking a fork in the tuna to check if they even bother changing it from day to day. I’m betting no, because nobody eats sandwiches here anyway.

Two resting figures with sombreros and a string of chilies. Guess what kind of food is served on this cart!

In the far corner, there is the indulgent waffle cart that makes high quality waffles with “USC” stamped right on them. Who knows what percentage of our tuition funds customized waffles, but I wasn’t kidding when I said these people have a lot of pride in those three letters. Along the back wall are cereals and breads. It is with profound glee that I am able to mix and match cereals at will here at college. The unholy matrimony of Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms and Dr. Pepper can finally be consummated in my little fizzing bowl. The ability to mix cereals is almost worth the asking price alone.

There is a standard Pizza cart (read: Bread With Some Cheese Cart) and the daily entrée cart, which is hit or very often miss. The fine chefs at EVK make some decent fare, but it’s not so good that you don’t get sick of it. They serve mashed potatoes so often, it’s a wonder that the entire farming community of Idaho doesn’t grab their spades and hoes and march down to So Cal to settle things.

They also always miss the most obvious food combinations, as if they want you to not enjoy your dining experience. Fish and Chips are rarely accompanied by tartar sauce. If some P.O.W. camp pulled that shit, they would find themselves smack in front of a U.N. war crimes tribunal. French fries and Chili as a soup of the day have only once coincided, and my buddy Max and I took quick advantage of this to craft artery-clogging heart-stopping chili cheese fries. The chefs must have seen us, because this coincidence has never occurred again.

This is what $40k a year buys you. Picture by Max

And, as a side note, I might add that USC is a Pepsi school, which means I have to go off campus to get my fix.

On the EVK tables, there are little placards written by the school’s nutritionist. Most of the time, the questions are unbelievably stupid, but the answers are well researched and informative. I must commend our nutritionist for her patience. It must be a difficult job having to deal with emails drunkenly pounded out by ditzy sorority girls asking you “will pasta n stuff make me fat cuz I want 2 be able 2 fit in my miniskirt & ugg bootz next season lol!” The question this week asked about healthy snacks to stave off the “Munchies” during all-night study sessions. I can imagine a smoke filled room full of giggling stoners as they typed this particular email. Max, my partner in crime, and I have printed out replacement answers:

Granted, I have too much time on my hands, but I wonder what the errant student reading that would think? Would they be dense enough to fire off an angry email to our innocent nutritionist? Time will tell.

That’s Jamba Juice. They don’t actually serve jambalaya, although you’d think they would.

The dining situation, is of course, nowhere near as dire as I romantically pretend it is. USC’s big enough of a school that they have Krispy Kreme and Jamba Juice commercial venues actually on campus. My newest dig is at the basement of commons, a franchise called La Salsa, which provides extremely affordable, high quality Mexican fare, which is where Socal is proverbially at. The culinary options that I have available compared to NYU (the other contender of my higher education fancy), are of course far worse than what I would’ve had in the Big Apple, but Max showed me the original Tommy’s (ten minutes from campus by car, half an hour if you were lost like we were), a local California grease joint which serves chili and cheese on every possible food, and is artery-stopping, drop-to-your-knees-and-thank-God-for-tastebuds good. The ready availability of In-and-Out burger is great, but the truth is, there are times I prefer good ol’ Dick’s back home. The burger joint, you sicko.

Indulgent times calls for the ten-minute walk to Parkside, which according to a newspaper article hung proudly by the Sector 9 Skateboard/Longboard rack, is one of the best college dining experiences in the country, save for the “watery coffee.” Those posh ninnies at Yale have the best cafeteria, but I know for a fact those wimpo losers definitely don’t have an awesome skateboard rack. Stepping into Parkside is like entering an entirely different world. The floors are marbled. The ceiling is raised. There are carts with high quality food and there are professional touches on the food, such as little garnishes of some random small green vegetable. You could throw a bit of that stuff on the fries on your Big Mac meal at McDonalds, and people’d think you have a gourmet burger there if it wasn’t for the cardboard appearance, taste, and smell, such is the power of such small vegetables. They truly are the staple for the professional gourmet feel in the culinary world, second only to embedding gold bullion right smack dab in the mashed potatoes.

The myriad of food options, all-you can eat buffets, lack of exercise and the stresses higher education places on feeble freshman minds results in the mythical “Freshman 15,” the mysterious fifteen pounds that freshman complain about gaining upon entering college. I have no idea how it is mysterious, as its origin should be readily apparent – it’s because you don’t have the control to put down the damn fork, fatty! The fact that people treat this as an inevitable mystery, while they pile on another helping of bacon and nacho cheese astounds me.

Given my propensity towards staying the exact same weight for all four years of my high school career, I should therefore have little to worry about. However, at the insistence of my parents, as well as the genetic predisposition towards high blood pressure, they nearly begged me to do some exercise lest I idle myself to death while I’m over here. I promised I would, and I intended to fully follow through on this promise.

In high school, I tried the Navy Seal workout routine, mainly because it had one pull up exercise that simulated climbing hand-over-hand down a rope and pulling yourself up as an unknown enemy walks under you deep in enemy lines. Often, I would add an additional movement, removing a five-pound weight simulating the standard SEAL issue firearm from my pocket while in the air, and silently eliminating said enemy below me. The SEAL book had a picture of a shirtless guy in sunglasses and ripped out his mind running along a beach. What the picture probably didn’t show was that he was really running behind enemy lines.

It was with this Rambo imagery in mind that I set out upon this routine, and as past experience probably reveals, any aspirations I have towards becoming America’s greatest Vietnam War vet John Rambo himself is fated to end in tragedy. Besides, I tried this stuff out during Track season, and I don’t think John Rambo would ever be found with a sissy pole vault in hand, vaulting his rock-hard abs over enemy barbed wire. Hell no – John Rambo is the guy that hangs onto the helicopter as it ferries goods back and forth.. Not the bottom of the helicopter, but to the spinning blades. He probably would be dizzy, but John Rambo is the kind of forward thinking, "Army of One" soldier who knows how to go to Rite Aid and get some Dramamine before such a critical mission.

Furthermore, I was egged on by, of all people, my brother Jimmy Wong. He has the unhealthy reputation of being a skinny lil’ guy for his entire life, and all that Freudian repression leads him to overcompensate now and try to become huge. I’m talking about a weight lifting, book buying, creatine mixing, protein counting, steroid injecting, Ahnold worshipping, mirror checking, bicep flexing, pull up attempting, all-out extravaganza here. This kid has gone ape in trying his hardest to make me look like a puny man. He walked around the house like it was shirtless o’clock twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, flexing his slowly developing abdominal pack whenever I was nearby.

Couple this with my friend Alan Kwan’s patient, silent, and steady trips to the weight room at Lakeside until, at Beth and Ilana’s birthday party, he busts out of fucking nowhere and starts doing windmills in the dance circle, shocking and awing every single person in the room. I’m talking so much shock and awe, that Fox News itself took notice and ran an entry on the ticker for a few hours “Alan Kwan serves entire Lakeside senior class: ‘He came out of nowhere!’ witnesses report”. The occasions he took to change his shirt or something caused people to drop whatever drink they were holding because of his dramatic physique.

With these two together, it is basically clear that I am losing out in stature, physically and metaphysically, in the old Lakeside Normandy Park Carpool Azns.

Luckily, I hardly needed to try, because summer came and India did wonders to my physique, primarily because the vegetarian diet and constant movement caused me to drop ten entire pounds. I entered USC with this deficit, ready to keep it that way. For the most part, I believe this has been the case all the way up to today.

But something kept nagging at me to exercise in the back of my head. Put it this way – I’m not winded when I climb the three stories to my room, but I’m glad if somebody’s there to open the door for me. I am pathetically out of shape, and speed walking to class doesn’t solve this dilemma. When I happened to catch up on Alex C-W’s LiveJournal, which basically reads like the detailed day-to-day account of a damn Olympic marathon runner, I knew that I had to get moving, and soon. If not for physical appearance, then for being in shape when the inevitable shots are fired at me when I’m off-campus walking to my car.

The solution appeared to be in the most inappropriate and ironically named McDonald’s Swim Stadium, which boasts an Olympic sized lap pool open to everyone. One particularly optimistic Friday afternoon, I grabbed my trunks and goggles and biked off to attain the legendary swimmer’s physique. Hopefully, this would also drive the ladies wild (not that my luscious form doesn’t already. Just more wild). I changed and showered quickly while fat seniors with their ding dongs hanging out toweled themselves off.

The pool was remarkably empty, and I only had one other person in the lane I was in. Back in the day when I was a little kid doing swimming at the Normandy Park Swim Club (NPSC 4 Lyfe), I was a fiend at the breaststroke. I remember one event where I dove in and somebody false started. They lowered the rope at the halfway point to signify to the swimmers that they needed to start again. When I reached it, I confusedly tread water for a moment while another NPSC buddy and I made eye contact across two lanes. Reaching a subliminal agreement, we dove under the rope and continued our lap, to the profound chagrin and embarrassment of our parents. My mom might have just up and left at that point, I can’t remember for certain.

Another fond memory I have of the NPSC Swim Club days was pigging out on ice cream sandwiches before my event. Alan noticed this, and told me “Dude, you aren’t supposed to pig out on ice cream sandwiches before you swim,” to which I replied “Bitch, I’m not that good at breaststroke anyway.” That’s why Alan can windmill, and whenever I try, I stub my toe on the floor and limp around for a whole damn week. But I digress. With the knowledge of my swimming background, you’re probably expecting tragedy. So was I.

The first thing I noticed, half-way through my first freestyle half-lap, was that this pool was long. Really long. Fifty yards doesn’t look that bad when you’re on the land and still breathing air. But throw your fat self in deep water and try to make that distance, and you immediately perceive the cruelty of distance. The U.S.’s victories at the Olympic Games were fresh on my mind. Those jerks made fifty-yards look like child’s play.

I reached the other end gasping. I couldn’t get out now, because that would be too embarrassing, so I rested a moment before heading back, this time using the breaststroke. Again, I barely made it. Each time, I had to take longer and longer to recoup, the whole time thinking to myself, “What the hell have you gotten into this time, Freddie?” Every time I turned my head to breath (every two strokes) during my freestyle lap, I would try and make eye contact with the lifeguard, pleading to be freed from this torment. Not for her to rescue me, because that’d be embarrassing, but to take out the whaling harpoon that they must have (for the fat seniors, obviously) and shoot me with it, ending this whole fiasco as honorably as possible.

Luckily at the 250-yard mark, pride lost out and the survival instinct won, and I got out at the opposite end of the pool. “Got out” perhaps is a bit too graceful a term. Stumbled out and damn near fell right back in is more like it. My legs were jello. My head was swimming around wildly and I had trouble balancing. As gracefully as possible (which is to say, “not very”), I walked to my towel defeated, and stumbled into the shower room. My brain was pounding to be let out, and every muscle was loudly protesting “What the hell were you thinking back there!?” as I rinsed off. Getting back in my jeans was most embarrassing, as I could barely move my legs and force them into their respective holes. I told myself I would rue the day I would have difficulty putting on pants, and that day had come. I stumbled out of the Lyon Athletic Center, got on my bike and rode home on the slowest possible gear (the one reserved for the steepest of hills and the wimpiest of wimps) thankful I was alive. Back at the dorm room, I sat down, chugged a Gatorade (I earned it, I told myself), and spent the next hour on the verge of upchucking my EVK lunch everywhere. How people find exercise fun and invigorating is simply beyond me.

The next day, the Daily Trojan ran a small side-story about how lifeguards at the McDonald’s Swim Center rescued a freshman at the bottom of the diving pool (which is only half the length of the swimming pool).

A lifeguard at McDonald Swim Stadium rescued a student from the bottom of the diving pool at approximately 3 p.m. Sunday, said Andrew Worley, a lifeguard instructor at the Lyon Center.

The lifeguard administered CPR to the male student, who was later taken to the hospital by Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics.

At the time of the incident, the diving pool was open for lap swimming only. A swimmer pointed out the drowning student to the lifeguard on duty.

If a mere twenty-five yards is enough to hospitalize some freshman, then I was damn lucky that fifty yards and too much pride didn’t just kill me outright. That could’ve been me, except the article would have ended “died on arrival. Nobody knew what the hell he was trying to prove.”

Needless to say, I haven’t swam since.

-f.w.