Diversity Grind

"Well, at least there's no eleven-teen-year-olds here," the guy next to me said.

And so my night at the CellBlock began.

With two weeks left until the semester ends I decided to get a little crazy and head out on a Wednesday night. Partly to pay homage to nightlife blog's humble beginnings, and partly because it was hosting an over-18 night, the ex-Crowbar location was my venue of choice for the evening.

Donning a sparkly blue shirt that I swore I was going to wear all the time when I bought it in January, I strutted up to the front door and discovered a discouragingly long line. Fortunately, the friendly bouncer advised me of the far cooler, side entrance.

And that was where I met the eleven-teen-year-old-avoiding-man.

When I inquired as to where he had spotted these wanna-be teenagers, he told me that Players Night Club teen night was their common hangout. Apparently, those young-ins aren't very fun to hang out with. Plus there's the whole felony thing to worry about.

By this point I had reached the front of the line, where the door guard took my $5 and drew red slashed zeros on each of my hands. Once inside, I immediately began looking for the free pizza, which I hoped to make up my $5 cover by eating. Shockingly, it wasn't very good. And the soda bar wasn't looking too appealing either.

I decided to head up to the dance floor, which was easier said than done with the amount of people traffic on the stairs. But once I managed to make it to the second floor, the first thing that hit me was the diversity of the place.

And I'm not talking Penn State poster "Respect Comes Full Circle" smiling faces diversity. There were people of every gender, race, weight, demeanor and sexuality participating in the crazy orgy-like dancing conditions. Heck, I even saw a few astrophysics majors bumping and grinding to the music.

Unfortunately, I had a little trouble dancing in the place. It's not that the music wasn't good. It's just that you can't stick your hands out and do the Macarena or the robot when there's somebody within one inch on all sides of you. I mean, I least thought we were going to get some kind of cake-walk-type thing going when they put on "Walk it out," but no such luck.

Finally I ran into (quite literally) an old acquaintance and her friend. I started to dance with them, but I then I noticed the eleven-teen-year-old-fearing-man wallflowering by the stairs. I felt bad, so I called him over and introduced him. But then he abruptly began dancing with one of the girls and the other one ran away, leaving me once again awkwardly alone in a sea of people.

Luckily, it doesn't take much skill to meet people at the CellBlock. That is, if by meet people you mean run into people, have a little awkward eye contact, maybe dance for a little bit and then get separated by the crowd.

By about 1 a.m. I was getting so hot I wished I had worn my super-ventilated work out shirt instead of my hip, button-down party shirt. I thought I was going to get some relief when the DJ started throwing out towels, but apparently they were reserved for "single ladiesssss" and "gold-diggers" only.

Deciding I really needed to get some form of hydration, I finally decided to work my way out of the pulsating mass. With many determined steps and quite a few "excuse mes" I at last emerged into the fresh State College air.

As I headed home, I concluded that the Cellblock was one prison I definitely would not want to be incarcerated in. But I wouldn't mind going every once in a while for a conjugal visit.

Hip - and hirable

I think it’s about time the title “best dancer evrrr” went on the resume.

I began Friday by “practicing my networking skills” with corporate visitors at the IST Building Future Forum (otherwise known as the how-many-free-corporate-trinkets-can-you-gather-in-three-hours contest).

After returning to my dorm victorious, armed with a hand-sanitizer spray pen, a key chain flashlight, a highlighter with built-in paper flags and a glowing fake ice cube, it was soon time to head off to the Collegian formal.

For those who haven’t been following this blog since its inception, the Collegian formal is the once-a-semester event where all of us newspaper folk leave the office and party it up.

At the winter formal, there’s a little more drama, with a few high-achieving reporters anxious to see who will win the coveted Reporter of the Semester award. But in the spring, all that work-related drama is pushed off to an end of the semester picnic. The formal consists only of what it was meant for: breaking it down.

Breaking it down from 8-11 is not an easy task — but I came prepared. With a few new moves that I picked up from the honors students last week, old standbys like the shopping cart, the fisherman and, of course, the robot, I had enough material to last the night.

When the Collegian’s news adviser stopped by midway through the formal and complimented my moves, my earlier in the day corporate experience sparked a thought in my head: Is this marketable?

Think about it — awesome dancing assures at least some fitness, rudimentary literacy (G…l…a…m…or…ous) and basic social skills. The human resources people call it “work-life balance.”

There’s plenty of geeks in the computer field. But if I can geek out AND groove at the company party, how can I loose? XML, Java, wireless networking, and ‘the robot’ – that works, right?

Party like there's no homework tomorrow

It was Friday night, and Kunkle Lounge was hoppin’.

Kunkle Lounge, the glass-walled enclosure on the edge of Hammond Building, traditionally houses studious engineering students interrupted only by the occasional science lecture.
But Friday night was no ordinary night.

Friday night was the Schreyer Honors College semi-formal — the one night when all the cool people who scored a 1350 or above on the SATs put down their books, dress to the nines, and party down in the engineering building like they don’t have a test on Monday.

This year’s theme was Mardi Gras, but the over-supply of free beads next to the door effectively eliminated any incentive for the honors girls to remove anything other than their glasses.

The sign on the way into the lounge read something like “It’s OK to drink on the street,” so I thought this event might be a little more inebriated than last year’s formal. I found out I was only half right when I strolled up to the “bar,” where a bunch of students where chugging cups of sparkling grape juice.

I checked upstairs, where a few guys in suits were in an intense game of beer pong — root beer pong, that is.

But as they told us at honors college orientation, you don’t need alcohol to have a good time. And the dance floor didn’t disappoint.

Outfitted in Mardi-Gras masks, crazy sunglasses and paper crowns, the honors students were taking awkward group dancing to a whole new level of awesome-ness. The ballroom dance club veterans were twirling, the break-dancers were windmill-ing and everyone else was doing the generic honors-college grove.

There were a few exceptions. Some girls who brought their non-honors-college boyfriends were dancing in a manner unbecoming of their GPA. Some people who memorized hip-hop songs as a reprieve from their upper-level science classes were showing off their practiced choreography. And a few drunk freshman who didn’t get the “not a good idea to pre-game for the honors college formal” memo were stumbling around in the hallway.

Overall, though, the general merriment of sober group dancing prevailed, and I happily cavorted along to such classics as “Miss New Booty,” “The Electric Slide,” “Do the Locomotion,” and “Bye bye bye.”

But then 11 o’clock arrived, and it was time to leave. The kids who were cool enough to party afterwards but for some reason still enjoyed the formal headed out to their late evening engagements. Others headed out for a snack at the Diner or McDonalds.

And still others, perhaps the truly honors among the honors college, headed home to bed. Because, after all, there was still more homework to do in the morning.

Hour after hour

Nine hours of Asian cultural education might seem excessive. But it was all worth it to see the break-dancing monkeys.

For some reason, the campus was saturated with Asian events this weekend. It began on Friday night with the Graduate Student Association movie about Tibet (very long, but Martin Sheen's narrative goodness made it all worth it). Then the Sikh dancing festival at the HUB. And then, on Saturday, the "Khmer Transcendence" event.

As I walked in, I got a little nervous -- perhaps it was deja vu from the Korean variety show two weeks ago. The program was a full 12 pages long. But when I saw such features as a Cambodian version of "Irreplaceable" and "SWVA POL with American Break Dance," I knew I had to hang around.

The show began with some traditional Cambodian dances. Some of them ran more than 10 minutes each, but their pointy hats and sequined costumes sent my brain into sparkle overload for the duration.

Then came a Cambodian version of America's Next Top odel (the prize was a year's supply of mangoes and a 40-pound bag of rice), a Cambodian conversation (I thought I had memorized how to ask a girl out in the Khmer language, but the phrase quickly devolved in my memory into the Hawaiian "Mele Kalikimaka") and at last, the break dancing song.

The program introduced the dance: "In Cambodian legend, monkeys always fight evil; in fact they are army soldiers." And indeed, those monkey-masked men did look ready for some kung-fu fighting action when they crawled onto the stage. They began with an interpretative dance accompanied by traditional Cambodian instruments, but that music soon faded away in favor of a pounding bass. And the break dancing began.

Back flips. Windmills. Somersaults. All while wearing money masks. I still didn't understand what Cambodian monkeys have to do with break dancing, but I must concede that it was pretty cool.

At 1 a.m., the Cambodian festival finally ended - bringing my total hours of Asian culture for the weekend to six and a half hours.

Protection is Tasty

Maybe I'm weird, but I don't think people should waste sexual protection gear just to get a taste of its sweet, sugary goodness.

I don't think this is a problem with condoms. I mean, I don't think I've ever seen a guy take one out of his wallet, open it, and start licking just to get the sugar high.

But Friday night, I discovered another form of protection - the "dental dam" - is apparently much more tempting for extortion as a candy substitute.

Basically, it's just a giant sheet of latex, meant to prevent the spread of a sexually transmitted infection (STI). Colored latex. Flavored latex. In fact, it pretty much looks like an unrolled fruit-roll-up.

My STI-wise friend brought a few of these to a party to educate some of our curious friends. And as soon as she removed the strawberry-flavored dental dam from its hygienic bag, one of our friends seized it and began eagerly examining it.

And then he started licking it. And from the expression on his face, he apparently found it quite tasty. He called to another friend - "Hey, check this out!" And soon, there were two guys happily enjoying the fruit-flavored goodness.

I though about it, but decided against joining in. Call me a little heterosexually uptight, but something about multiple guys licking the sameSTI-protection device was a little bit of a turn off.

Glowsticks for Jesus

I was standing in the HUB on Saturday night when I saw them: girls dressed in colorful kimonos and holding shiny fans.

I didn't have tickets to see Charlie Murphy that night and I was planning on waiting by the door to see if someone with a ticket didn't show up. But being the sucker for bright, flashy objects that I am, I had to check these girls out first.

Something seemed a little funny when I stepped into Alumni Hall for what I discovered was "Dynamic Korea - a Cultural Variety Show." Maybe it was the neon-green programs. Maybe it was the calculating efficiency with which one of the kimono girls ushered me to a seat, using her fan like a glowing airplane-guiding baton.

But as I examined the program in the minutes before the program started, I realized what was giving me the weird vibe. This wasn't just any variety show. This was a Jesus variety show.

The events certainly looked exciting: a glow-stick performance, a rock performance of the Korean Anthem, a Taekwondo demonstration, a fan dance and a performance by Eliot Chang, a comedian and Asian activist. And something called "Neo Crusade Go."

But with the show co-sponsored by the Korean Students for Christ, some of the events had a interesting religious twist. For instance, the description of the glow-stick performance didn't mention raves or even shiny lights. It was all about "spreading the love of the Lord" in the Dominican Republic. Maybe they have a lot of glowsticks down there.

Then I started reading about "Neo Crusade Go." The description talked about the "torrent of socio-religious relations among Christians and non-Christians," and Christianity's messages to the general public. "This is not an attack to those who are non-Christians, but more of an outreach to those who have not yet heard the news so they may be saved," it read.

OK, it sounded gentle enough. But farther along the program read: "we feel it is essential to remind the world that without the Lord, there is only eternal damnation ready to clasp us with its decrepit claws."

Woah. Time to make a run for Charlie Murphy. I quickly looked to both sides and then casually walked out, trying to ignore the suspicious stares from the kimono ladies. Fortunately they let me go, and soon I was back in the loving embrace of the world's decrepit claws.

I made it into Charlie Murphy's performance, but a part of me is still a little sad. Now I may never know: WGWJU - What glowsticks would Jesus use?

On the Prowl

While volunteering with Habitat for Humanity over spring break, I quickly learned to avoid Alabama's flying nails, power tool injuries, alligator attacks, rouge fishing hooks, and bad drivers. But the most fearful, and yet, most intriguing danger in Alabama, is the cougar.

I first learned of this legendary species while riding along in the back of a pickup truck (quite a common site in Alabama). One of my friends asked the group what they thought of the cougar he had just seen. But we were in the middle of town, and I didn't see any wild animals around.

The cougar he was referring to was not a wild animal. It's a particular type of person -- an older woman seeking a younger man. The origin of the term is unclear, but Urbandictionary.com notes a commonality between the animal species and the woman: "Man is cougar's number one prey." It adds, "The cougar can frequently be seen in a padded bra, cleavage exposed, propped up against a swanky bar in San Francisco (or other cities) waiting, watching, calculating; gearing up to sink her claws into an innocent young and strapping buck who happens to cross her path."

The term caught on with my group really quickly. At times, it seemed like the trip had turned into a cougar hunt. We spotted them in town, on the road, on television and at the beach.

I also learned the fine points of cougar identification, like how to separate the animal from the traditional MILF, slang for an attractive mother. While the MILF might just be admired from afar, the cougar is always "on the prowl," searching for her next Mrs. Robinson-style attack. There's also no requirement that a cougar be a mother or married. However, the consensus was that an "off-the-market" (perhaps 'poached' would be the term?) cougar was definitely worth more trophy points.

I thought this was all fun and games until the late night ride back to Penn State. It was then that one of the group members confessed that he had been the subject of a cougar attack -- and not just a random pouncing. This cougar came back three times to feed again. Plus she took his hat afterwards.

He said the cougar hunt was exciting at first, but it quickly became awkward, especially among his friends. He's trying to wean himself away right now, but a jealous cougar is more possessive than a grizzly bear with cubs.

So while I did learn a lot about construction, the South and life over spring break, I think I'll stick to admiring this animal from afar.