Adventures in the Dojo: Saturday Night Live, But at Hofstra?

This evening, I stumbled into local hotspot and "hip" hangout area, The Dojo, expecting the usual raucous and rowdy group of troublemakers I normally spend time with.  However, I was pleasantly surprised when, instead, I found a group of upstanding young men and women in the midst of a tech rehearsal for Saturday Night Live.  For those of you who don't know, SNL is a quite popular sketch-based comedy show featuring a recurring cast, a celebrity guest, and a musical guest.  Tonight's celebrity guest was the world famous obnoxious film student, Dylan Brawnsauce Merrick.  What follows below is what I saw when I rudely interrupted their performance in order to do well on a Journalism 010 assignment (thanks a lot Professor Peyronnin!).

Now, some people may say that The Dojo is not a hip hangout spot for really cool outcast types.  Others might even go so far as to say that is merely what Dylan and I call the 5th floor Nassau lounge.  So this video goes out to all y'all haters, it's real and really awesome.  Here's proof.  Yeah.

The Spring Break to end All Spring Breaks

As we all know, this is the last spring break any human will ever see, according to the extraordinarily accurate and credible Mayan Doomsday Conspiracies.  In light of this impending tragedy, I decided to make the most of my spring break by spending it in the last place anyone would expect to find an inquisitive young college student: the Hofstra campus.

Laaaaaaammmmeee.

Yes, I spent Easter of 2012 alone, meandering through the veritable ghost town of a campus listening to The Black Keys and The Rolling Stones and feelin' real cool and aloof.  At this point I had been almost two days without any real human interaction, and it was starting to get to me.  I resorted to the Internet to find comfort, but it wasn't the same.

Only Flight of the Conchords could express how alone I felt.

Lucky for me, reinforcements came the next day in the form of future Supreme Court Justice Pat Tierney, who looks strikingly familiar to my good friend Gustaav's older brother.  Pat and I tore the living bajeezes out of this campus.  We did incredibly badass activities like going to work and watching TV, and even going out for pizza!  This was probably the craziest period of my break; we never knew what was going to happen next.

SUPER ACTION WORKING AT A COMPUTER MADNESS!!!

From time to time I would also journey to the distant part of campus known as the WRHU Radio Station.  While there, I helped with the broadcast of Hofstra's own award-winning news program, Newsline.  There were three or four separate fires on the Island, and I got to report on them!  I also broadcast some stories about robberies, identity theft, and other events.  It was really fun.

My face when I read aloud about the man bitten in a robbery attempt in Freeport.

Testing out my journalistic chops in live broadcast was fun, but probably the coolest thing I did at the radio over break was getting an interview with one of my favorite modern ska-punk bands, Suburban Legends.  I got to talk to the lead guitarist/professional awesome guy Brian Klemm about the album they just dropped and their upcoming tour with Goldfinger and Reel Big Fish.  Just to show you briefly how awesome they are, here's one of the awesome covers they recorded for the album:

Yup.  Disney covers.  Enough said.

Toward the end of break, the badassery of the Mufson/Tierney duo escalated real fast.  As more people came to relieve me of my solitude, the awesomest of all things happened: we made a blanket fort.  The successful construction of a blanket fort is a necessity for any group of ambitious young college students.  Ours may not have reached the magnitude nor the square footage of the fort from NBC's hit television show Community, but it turned out ok.

Pat and I needed the help of only one other student, our friend Renee, before we began to commence the building process.  And what a process it was.  We planned, gathered, clipped, pinned, tucked, ate, drank, tied, located, relocated, laughed, cried and duct taped until what stood before us was the majestic and beauteous construct that you see in the slideshow above.  After that most of the rest of my break was just spent chilling in and around the blanket fort.  More people came and more people basked in the glory of the fort, but after the building process was over, the break kind of plataued.  Fun was had by all, but nothing can compare to the sense of achievement one feels when laying inside a blanket fort he has constructed with his own hands.

This majestic piece of real estate is staying up til Hofstra Public Safety tears it down.  It remains a monument to a rather mellow but very enjoyable spring break.  

And now, Suburban Legends' cover of the Bed Intruder Song.