Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

The Gryphon and I were invited to a fun event on Saturday, a "Red Dwarf" marathon hosted by a friend of mine from the Penn State Monty Python Society, the ER Doctor, whom we had reconnected with back in September through a mutual friend, Attila the Pun.

She and her husband have been holding a similar get together since they were still living in State College, but this was the first one I'd attended.

The guests were welcome to start arriving any time after noon, but she told me that they probably wouldn't start watching videos until about 7.

We were welcome to stay overnight and enjoy breakfast with them the next morning, and she said our dog, Una, would be welcome, but after last weekend, when we took her with us to Com Con, we didn't want to introduce her to another strange place with a lot of strange people and another dog. So we arranged to have our dog walker come by a couple times while we were out.

We slept in as much as we could, until the animals started to complain that they needed breakfast or to be let out. Then we got ready and had a nice breakfast at a local diner and stopped at a couple stores before getting on the road.

The trip took us about two hours, so we arrived between about 3:30 and 4. Sure enough, a Penn State flag was hanging out front, as promised. They lived in one half of a large double house in Harrisburg.

When we knocked on the door, it was opened immediately and we stepped into a room full of people who looked vaguely familiar. There was one face I recognized right away, Mr. Smiley, with whom I'd also reconnected back in September.

Our host and hostess were in the other room, so I introduced The Gryphon and I and said I knew The ER Doctor from Penn State. "So do we," they all chimed. While I knew her through the Penn State Monty Python Society (MPS), most of them new her through her husband, who was a music major. I happened to have a few friends who were in the Blue Band, the Penn State marching band, as well as taking music courses, so they tended to cross-pollinate, I guess.

The ER Doctor made her way into the room to greet us and offered to give us a quick tour. We handed her a bag of apples and oranges we'd brought. Their place was very big compared to the little rowhouse we're renting. They had a nice downstairs, consisting of the living room we'd just been in, a large dining room, where they had all the food, and a long kitchen with lots of cabinets, counter space and shelves, most of them appearing to date back to the 1920s when the house was built.

On the second floor was a master bedroom, the nursery for their baby boy, the main bathroom and their computer room/office space. They also had a third floor, currently not being used, which had another small bedroom, another bathroom, and a large room they're using for storage. So they definitely have more space they can expand into if they like.

We followed her back downstairs and chatted with her and Mr. Smiley, along with some other people who drifted into the hallway with us. We got into a long conversation about Christmas cards and Christmas letters, which started from the fact that the invitation to the marathon had been included in The ER Doctor's Christmas cards.

She encouraged us to get something to eat, but I wasn't that hungry because we'd stopped for sandwiches at a Starbucks on the way there. I took some fruit and sampled some of the bean dip with some really good bread. Out back, where they were keeping the beverages, I picked up a nice local beer.

I returned to the living room, where most everybody was watching The Venture Brothers, a cartoon I'd heard about but never really seen. It features too young guys who have adventures with a cast of quirky characters. Kind of like a modern Johnny Quest.

After that, some of the guys started playing Guitar Hero, including The ER Doctor's husband (left) and Mr. Smiley.

About 5 p.m., The ER Doctor got people started making their own pizzas. They could use either home made dough to make their own crusts or use a premade crust, put toppings on it and put it in the oven for 20 minutes.

At first I wasn't interested, but when it got towards 6, I made a pizza for The ER Doctor and I to share, since she also wanted lots of veggies. Meanwhile, she held her baby, who was already starting to get sleepy.

She set a red tomato timer for 20 minutes and had me hold it. We talked as it slowly ran down to zero. The timer went off with a minute to spare, which surprised me. I started complaining about it loudly, and Mr. Smiley said I should complain to the manufacturer. So I turned it over, and it said, "Made in China."

"Get China on the phone," I called.

"And ask them if they deliver," someone said.

When our pizza was ready, I ate in the kitchen area while talking to people. We had some fun conversations. One guy had taken a little necklace-like device used to hang around bottles to distinguish them and hung it over his ear. We were calling him a pirate, and I got a picture of him looking like one.

The ER Doctor said, "Watch, you'll be on the Internet now." I assured him I wouldn't use his picture if he objected but he said it was fine. She joked, "Mention that if any woman like his picture, they should call him."

I don't usually use Musings as a singles bar, but I don't object to the concept. So if anyone is interested in a fun-loving buccaneer nicknamed Twonk, e-mail me.

This got us into a conversation about the Internet and dating. I observed that all you had to do was create a My Space page with a nice photo of yourself, and soon you'll be getting people who can barely keep their hands on the keyboards talking to you about how, quote, "hott" you are.

The single guys in the room assured me that's a phenomenon almost entirely reserved for women. They also commiserated with each other about how difficult it is to find a woman who's not a "psycho hose beast." But I'm living proof that, even if you have a long stretch of bad luck with dating, you can eventually find someone who's right for you.

Most of the people I knew through the Blue Band I knew through one of two people. One was The Witch, who is a practicing Wiccan and one of my closest friends in college. The other was through a fellow MPS member I'll call Adrian Wapcaplet, after a character he loved in one of his favorite Monty Python sketches.

In our freshman year, I'd spent a lot of time in his dorm complex, working on the MPS newsletter, Completely Different, which we co-founded, and then grabbing dinner with a bunch of his friends, including The Musician, who was almost inseparable from Adrian. Unlike most of the other music majors and Blue Banders I knew, who could be classified as trumpet players, singers or drummers, The Musician could play just about anything. He also had a great, dry sense of humor, and he and Adrian would get into protracted pun battles that were fast enough to be awe-inspiring.

A guy with long, blonde hair came in from grabbing a beer and I remarked to him that he looked familiar. "Did you go to Penn State?" he said. Yes, he had. "Were you in the Blue Band." He was. "Did you know Adrian and The Musician?"

The ER Doctor, who was nearby, said, "He is The Musician."

I took another look at him, another look at the merry eyes, the shape of his face, the wry grin, and I realized it was him. He'd grown out his military-style short hair into a long, blonde ponytail. Unlike most of guys, who grew their hair in college, he'd waited until later. His dad was in the military, and it had taken a long time for him to get past his upbringing and find his own style.

The Musician with the tomato timer

He asked me if I'd been in contact with Adrian, and I said no. I told him that he was the one person I'd expected would no, because they'd seemed so close. The last we'd heard of him, he'd won $32,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. In fact, there were a number of people at the party who had hung out with him back in the day, and no one had spoken to him for years.

We talked about where our lives have taken us so far. He started right out of college in a responsible job, doing something he thought would get him somewhere, but he didn't like it. He wanted to do what he loved, which was music. So when he heard that a Celtic band was auditioning for a new member, he studied their CDs and made such a favorable impression at the audition they asked him to join right away.

So now he's in a Celtic alternative band called Coyote Run and has been touring all over the Eastern U.S. with his very sweet dog, Dingo. He says they might come through Philly soon. I told him we'll try to see them if they do.

Dingo and I became friends, and she curled up next to me for a couple hours, since I was seated on the floor.

I told him about how I'd gone through various jobs, including working for a daily newspaper before moving to Philly and finding another path. Even though my job at the Museum was horrific, I still learned a lot about myself and grew a lot. And now I'm in a space where I'm starting to feel like I can finally do the things I've always wanted to.

Speaking of former friends and acquaintances, I talked about WPSU to a really tall guy I knew looked familiar. He'd been friends with some of my friends in college. He gave me some tips on how to digitize my old radio air checks, recommending a software program to use, in conjunction with a decent sound card. Then I could create archives that would be a lot more stable.

I also ended up talking to a guy who looked really familiar. I asked him if he'd lost a lot of weight since college, and he said he had. He looked at me and said he thought I had, too. Turns out he was another of Adrian's friends. He joined the Rubber Chicken Comedy Closet, a half-hour sketch comedy show on WPSU, at the tail end of my involvement with it. He stayed with it when it changed names to Off the Air for a brief period before actually going, er, off the air.

We talked about some in-jokes from back of the day and some of our favorite sketches, such as a parody song done to Tom Petty's "Free Falling", called "Beer Goggling". The guys who worked on that did such a good job the other DJs used to play it during their shifts. Apparently, it got a second life later when an a capella group composed of Penn State alumni used to perform it!

About 7:30 we started watching Red Dwarf. Instead of watching them in order, they took requests for favorite episodes. The Gryphon doesn't own all the series, and I had only seen Red Dwarf in the past when a friend was playing it or when I stumbled across it on cable, so most of the episodes we watched were new to me.

We saw an episode from a time period when they were traveling around in a run-about instead of in the big ship, the Red Dwarf. We also saw one from a later season when they found a way to return to Red Dwarf back in time and ended up serving prison time and perpetually getting in trouble.

And we saw one or two I had seen before, as well. Everyone joked around, especially in between episodes. They were tossing around a plush Cheat, from the Strongbad online cartoons. It made a funny noise when hit.

They quoted a lot of lines from other things, ranging from Monty Python to Ren and Stimpy to original sketches one of their friends had written back in the day. A lot of them today are still in the performing arts, whether professionally or through community programs.

The ER Doctor got a shot of all of us, except for her husband's brother, who'd already left.

We stayed until about 11:30 before making our way home. By that point, they started watching Red & Stimpy instead. We wanted to leave while I was still alert enough for a two hour drive. The drive was uneventful, and our doggie, Una, greeted us joyfully when we got home.

Incidentally, here's something fun you might want to watch. Two of the party guests are a very cool couple. She works in a museum, and he's a volunteer firefighter, and Splenda shot an online commercial about their love story.

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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