Chapter 10: Thursdays, before a meeting

No matter what, Thursday afternoons at the Erie Square Gazette offices before a meeting was usually alive with activity with liberal amounts of inactivity (aka “rest”).

Except for one semester, I usually didn’t have a class in the Thursday afternoon period. I usually had classes in the morning or later on toward night. This worked out great because chances were that we had put our very souls on the line in order to create an issue of the newspaper. This is really no exaggeration. I seriously sliced a piece of skin off one of my fingers creating an issue once back in 2002.

If one were to walk in to the office of the Erie Square Gazette on a Thursday afternoon before a meeting one could see any number of things happening. Sometimes we anxiously awaited the printer to call and tell us the issues were ready because we only handed it at 10 am that morning instead of 5 pm the night before. Sometimes we’d get lackeys to distribute these papers. One such lackey was Trey, a man who could generate a solid week worth of material. He was ubiquitous around the office despite being completely oblivious to the fact that nobody really wanted him there. We usually would try to send him to the far away spots to distribute papers just to get him out of the office for a little while. It only worked a couple times but he caught on.

The office was, for the most part, open to guests at all times. The only time the masses may not have been allowed in was during the final hours of producing an issue. Even then though there may still be a few select people around to keep us sane.

Thursday afternoons though saw everyone free from classes for a little while. We all converged into what we essentially turned into our dorm. We could call it that considering how much we ate and slept there. If we could have stayed overnight we would have.

The College Center itself could be busy during the afternoons Thursdays. But if you were really cool you were at the ESG offices. With 3 rooms all to ourselves and enough chairs and couches to go around (along with the occasional pillow) it was easy to have a little get together of friends to cut loose and relax from the week. We certainly had all the resources for such massive weekly gatherings.

There was always something playing those afternoons. Back in the day we put our high-speed modems to work.

Many times I would have a marathon of whatever videos RJ or I would download. Many classic MST3k shorts were played, including classics such as “A Date with Your Family,” “Mr. B Natural,” and my all-time favorite, “What to Do on a Date.”



Music videos also got play. The uncensored version of Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” proved to be quite popular. Other classics included New Order’s “Blue Monday,” Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People,” and a personal favorite being Genesis’ “Land of Confusion”. Hate the band all you want; that video is genius.

TV shows did get their fair share as well. Easily the most popular series we watched was Clone High. But there was more than just Clone High, sir. We had an episode of ALF on the computer as well.

But the reigning kings of programming at the ESG were easily Bill Cosby, Himself, Robin Williams: Live on Broadway, and GoodFellas. It was hard to not walk into the office and miss how chocolate cake can be served for breakfast, the origin of golf, or how Joe Pesci needed his mom’s butcher knife. I might have also obtained a copy of Bowling for Columbine 6 months before the official DVD release, but I cannot confirm that nor can I confirm the relatively huge screening we may or may not have not unlikely had.

Anyways, I don’t believe I’m exaggerating when I say any one of those could be played 3 times in a given day and then have more time on a Thursday afternoon. We may not have watched them all the time but it was like putting on a good album. The sound of it was great. I could fall asleep to the peaceful sounds of Bill Cosby talking about how he thought his name as a child was “Jesus Christ” and his brother “Damn it.” If I was feeling bad and it was too early to go to Denny’s it would be okay to hear Robin Williams talk about Olestra and anal leakage.

Once during a play of GoodFellas Trey sat and watched it. A couple minutes in as Ray Liotta is giving narration Trey asks “Is that Liev Schreiber?” That being a remark met with what can only be described as a resounding chorus of sighs from all in the room. Minutes later, as Robert De Niro makes his bombastic entrance onscreen Trey asks “Is that Robert De Niro?” and was met with a more exasperated, yet still resounding chorus of sighs.

The second movement of sighs had hardly ended when he finally asked “Is this a mob movie or something?”