THE YEAR IN REVIEW, 2003-2004
Wow. It's over. It's finally, finally over. I got home yesterday, and it's extremely weird to be back home with my family, knowing that this time it's for real. All my stuff is back here, and now I'm trying to find room for my fridge (which ended up in my basement) and my TV (my room), not to mention all the tiny little pieces of crap I've accumulated over the year. Where will my collection of evil Bible animals end up? What should I do with the periscope that was randomly given to me? And most importantly, should I put my Universal Life Church certificate up on my door here? But despite the current dilemma I'm facing regarding placement of knick-knacks, I found the time to truly look back on the year I had at Holy Cross. Man, that year rocked. I met so many people, made a shitload of friends, learned a ton, and perhaps was the happiest I had ever been. This year at Holy Cross has so many stories and people to talk about that I've decided to try and record as much as I can. We’ll start with about a dozen people who were really close to me over the year, and then move on to the stories, which I’m sure will feature just about everyone I encountered over the year, for good or bad. So sit back and prepare to go into the Not-Particularly-Wayback-At-All Machine with me. We'll start this with the man who deserves to go first...
Mark Hamilton: Mark was perhaps the perfect roommate for me. He was laid-back, a huge sports fan, neat (but not obsessively so), willing to go with the flow, a huge sports fan, hilarious, friendly with everyone, and a huge sports fan (did I mention that?). He and I hit it off pretty quickly, although it took me a while to realize just how good a friend he was. First semester was a little weird, since we had such different schedules. We were cool and everything, and we worked well together, but it was a stretch to really call us friends. We didn't hang out all that much, and we talked about very little besides sports. But then, second semester was a major shift in my point of view of Mark. He became a bit more open, talked a lot more, and our schedules meshed a little better. I really became friends with him then, and the night I got taken to the hospital proved the kind of friend he was. He's perhaps the classiest guy I've ever had the fortune of knowing, and yet is totally down-to-earth. If I had known the kind of guy he truly was, I wouldn't have agreed to room with Greg (no insult to Grapes here), since the second semester of my freshman year was a great, great time. Mark, thanks for all the memories. Stay friends.
Andrew Rhoades: Rhoades was someone who I got to know very well over the year. At first, I wasn't quite sure what to make of him. He screamed "intellectual snob" to me, and I'm one of those people who can't stand that type of person. However, despite his occasional bursts of that indie snob attitude (which is inevitable, really), he's a surprisingly down-to-earth guy. I had incredibly interesting personal conversations with him, and really got to know him better than I had ever known people I had known for years. We would just get together, talk a bit, and pretty much nothing was off limits. Andy and Maureen did spend WAY too much time secluded this year, but that didn't change an awful lot. I stayed friends with both of them, and I got to know both of them as individuals and as a couple. Hopefully they'll survive the summer by themselves. Another thing I'll give him credit for was that he tried to change himself over the year. He dealt with the excessive "bad" music from my collection (although I still don't see what the problem with Aerosmith is), the wrestling (STONE COLD! STONE COLD!), and the asshole comments I'd make (very few of which I meant). Andy's a great guy, and I get the feeling we'll be friends for a while. Still, you never know...
Brian Vesely: ...since I thought I'd be longtime friends with Brian too. He and I connected the earliest, and especially early on in the year, he and I had some really great conversations. Brian's a truly BRILLIANT biologist, and even though he can't write papers for shit, he's truly an intelligent guy, which you can tell from having a simple conversation with him. He had a lot of problems with his family life, many of which almost nobody else knew about, and the fact that he even continued on, dealt with ROTC, and did all his work was a minor miracle. He's back in Florida now (I dropped him at the airport early this morning), and then it finally hit me what's it going to be like to have a Holy Cross experience without Brian Vesely. No more beating women jokes, a good deal less gay jokes (which I'm sure he's incredibly grateful for), and the end of the Mr. Boston legacy. I was really, really glad to get to know him, and he better stick to his promises of getting on AIM and coming back to Holy Cross for a visit next year. I know it's not gonna be the same without him, and it's unfortunate. I'll really miss the guy.
Bill Miskinis: For the longest time, I really thought that Bill was gonna be one of those guys who I was friendly with, but never truly connected with. We have almost nothing in common, as I'm a loud, obnoxious agnostic jerk, and he's a fairly quiet, courteous Catholic nice guy. It really doesn't fit together, but towards the end of the year, especially during finals week, he and I had a bunch of great convesations, and I left Holy Cross feeling like Bill was really a true friend of mine. Sure, our value systems might be quite different, but we did connect to each other in the end. He might make for the oddest AIM conversations of all-time, but you know that they're never gonna be boring conversations. I wish him the best of luck working at Dinand this summer, in all its non-air conditioned glory.
Mike Lueger: Mikey fell into a category fairly similar to Bill at the beginning of the year, and although I don't think I was ever quite as close to him as I was to Bill, he definitely became a better friend than I had expected. He and I got to bond over being rejected by just about everyone besides Holy Cross, and we did end up having more to talk about than that. He was a good drinking buddy, and we both ran into our problems during the year (him up in Montreal, and me down in Nick’s room…), so we have that to have us bond together as well. Mike really changed a lot during the year, as he went from fairly reclusive theater guy to open, although quite odd, friendly guy. He got himself a girlfriend too, which seems like it worked out quite nicely. Katie’s a good person, and the two of them seem like they’d work well together. Mike was a good one to have as a neighbor, and I profusely apologize for waking him up on the occasions we felt it necessary to torture Jimmy.
Maureen Gassert: The only female in our group originally, which thankfully changed. It’s nice to have lots of men and women in the group, and especially when your lone rep for the female category is Maureen, who openly admits to hating women. She gets lumped together with Andrew for most aspects, since they never stopped spending time together after November. When Scandalous moved out, it seemed like you could hardly ever see them. However, Maureen made a great friend. The road trip down to New Jersey, the constant annoying Latin diatribes, mocking her for believing in Atlantis, finding out she knew a lot of people from my high school, her dressing up as a whore for the play and getting smacked on the ass by Ed Elliot, and generally being mocked by the rest of us for being extremely low on common sense and her faiure to understand jokes, and so many more things made up the year with Maureen.
Greg Kozaczka: I know I just spelled his name wrong there (I gave it my best shot, though), and I just don’t give a shit. It’s Greg’s goddamn fault for having a name that fucking Polish anyways. Greg’s a good guy, though. He’ll be my roommate for next year, and although he joined the group a little later (he was actually one of the last people I met on our hall), I really got to know him well. Greg, along with Mark, probably gets the title for nicest guy on our hall. Honestly, Greg’s probably a little too nice for his own good. He just wants to lay back and have a good time, which he usually does. He’s also EXTREMELY good at stating the obvious, as we all learned during the year. Between his crazy Polish antics, his getting hit in the face by a baseball, and the away messages I got to leave him, we all had plenty of laughs at Greg’s expense. Still, he took them like a pro, and that was appreciated. I’m sure he and Michaela are gonna miss each other this summer, and I know that when fall comes around, I’m gonna be missing the privacy of my room with the two of them in there…
Matt Moore: Moore was another guy who I kinda hung around with at the beginning of the year (back in the days of the five-person clique that never seemed to talk to anyone else), but I became really good friends with over the year. Moore and I were both big fans of sports, video games, and wrestling, so you can see why I’d gravitate towards him. Matt had his weird moments (mainly his total unwillingness to explain his actions, which were usually perfectly explainable and normal), but overall, he was a very cool guy to hang out with. And he definitely took more than his share of gay jokes over the year, which he was able to handle surprisingly well. I did try and cut back towards the end of the year, but once something like that gets started, it gets a life of its own. Matt, good luck with your crazy old-skool baseball team, and I’ll see you over the summer.
Matt Gagne: Gagne, the crazy techhead. Seriously, where would Hanselman 2 have been without this guy? He was THE guy to repair computer problems and the like if anything went wrong, and I’m sure he probably visited half of Hanselman before the year was done. Seriously, he thought anything about technology was “AWESOME!” Matt was a nice low-key guy when we didn’t talk about technology and his 802.11a/b/g 54 kbps/sec wireless router with KEY ENCRYPTION CHAINS GLAVEN!, and he was usually willing to go with the flow. However, there is one black mark against Matt Gagne that will forever haunt him, and that I will never, ever let him forget, and never, ever grant forgiveness for: He (and his little brother) were the reason I had to see Hellboy. That’s $9 and 2 hours that I’ll never get back.
Steve Kress: Kress didn’t hang out with us at all for the first half of the year, and that’s one of my greatest regrets of the year. Steve was definitely another one of the nicest guys I met over the year at Holy Cross. Like Matt Moore, he took his share of gay jokes, which he didn’t bear quite as well. I figure when you couple those with the Ma Kress jokes, it just got to be too much for him. Still, K-Diddy was a lot of fun to hang out with, he stayed with me the night I got taken to the hospital (at least, that’s what people told me), he was always up for a round of Mario Kart, and he re-introduced me to the glory that is Saved By The Bell, which he is the undisputed lord and master of. He knows EVERYTHING about the show. Kress, don’t burn yourself out over the summer, come back, and show Badger Mile just how much faster you are! AOL 9.0 Turbo for LIFE!
Kevin Daley: Daley’s a totally unique person from the year at Holy Cross. He’s extremely quiet, but he always finds a way to inject his own brand of humor into the conversation. He’s one of those guys who always has a joke handy, and if you bother to listen to the stuff that comes out of his mouth, you’ll always have a good time. Kevin was another Mario Kart warrior, and he was surprisingly good for a guy who just didn’t powerslide at the beginning of his run. Kevin was also surprisingly generous with his liquor, and never did get all that mad over the serve me, Cameron, and Hammy pulled on him by taking all his stuff out of his room. Kevin’s a guy who I’m definitely keeping in touch with, and I hope he just makes it back to Holy Cross alive, since it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t.
Chris Micik: The King of Fools. What more can I say about him? He was the resident Yankee nut on our hall, and he fought back valiantly against the overwhelming forces of Sox fans. He was wrong, but at least he fought, despite knowing surprisingly little about baseball. Chris was always good for a laugh, and he loved to play the fool over the year. He always tried to do his best, and was even more generous than Kevin with his liquor. I know that I sure as hell wouldn’t have shared as much as he did. Overall, Chris was a great guy to chill with, and I know that there are few people who would have done what he did for everyone. That one day, making that long haul with about 100 pounds of various “liquid” on his back for over 3 miles, was a day that will live on in Holy Cross history. That was just a prime example of what Micik would do for his buddies, and I hope he realizes that we always respected his gestures.
That’s 13, so I’ll stop there. But that doesn’t begin to do justice to all the people who I dealt with this year. I had so many more friends, including (in no particular order):
- Andrew Cameron
- Jimmy Maliszewski
- Oscar Garcia
- Pete Luby
- Katie O’Brien
- Rachel Mergens
- Nick Bradley
- Kyle Murphy
- The Dif
- Dan Cabrera
- Kevin Mullaney
- Joe Fiorito
- Torey Thomas
- Jacob Vellacio
- Galo Lopez
- Kyle Fischler
- Kevin Werner
- Matt Mastromauro
- Garrett “Dallas” Thompson
- Joe Nemeth
- Mike Sandstrom
- Colleen Germaine
- Michaela Sparling
- Joel Freckelton
- Jared Fiore
- T.J. Ferrante
- Hantz Exil
I’m sure there are more people who I forgot to list (and I’m sure that among those people, there are some really important ones), but that’s all that I can think of off the top of my head for now. All of these people, and many more, made this year at Holy Cross so special. I really appreciate this year and everything that happened in it, and these people were an integral part in me enjoying my time at Holy Cross.
Now, it’s time for a huge-ass list. What kind of list, you ask? Just a list of anything I remember from the year at Holy Cross that I feel is worthy of adding to this list. There’s no order, no rhyme or reason, and absolutely NO sex in the champagne room ANYWHERE on this list, so I suggest you don’t look for it. And now, I move on…
- Micik throwing a baseball through his own window, breaking both panes of a double-paned window
- S.C.U.M.
- The infamous night in Nick’s room and my subsequent tour of Worcester’s finest medical facilities
- The ultimate serve on Kevin Daley: Taking all his possessions out of his room, and into mine.
- Mullaney forcing me to go to his swim meets
- Mike and Brian exchanging nutshots in the hallway
- Moore drilling Brian in the nuts
- Mike drilling me in the nuts (too many nutshots…)
- The King Boo Invitational
- Dallas challenging Lueger to a ninja fight: Dallas, his helmet, and his hockey stick vs. Mike and his plastic lightsaber
- Brian falling all over EVERYONE whenever he got drunk
- Going to Lowenthal’s room when he fell asleep and throwing the horrendous-smelling fried mushroom things at him
- Hot “ ‘Vive-on-‘Vive ” action
- Putting all kinds of different porn up on Tom Morin’s background
- That entire Montreal trip: Dinner next to Fr. Linnane (who could smell the sin on me), the drunkenness of Friday night, the tour of random Montreal neighborhoods on Saturday, the Red Sox winning Game 3, and the bus ride back, where the Sox won Game 4
- On that note, the entire 2003 ALDS and ALCS. That was a crazy time, and although I wanted to kill myself after the ALCS, I know that I’ll have my revenge someday. I just gotta keep living one day at a time.
- Duping Gagne into watching wrestling over his comp/TV, since he thought a three-hour event was only an hour long
- Visiting Andrew in Jersey twice. The sketchy bowling alley (which ruled), the sketchy diner (which also ruled), the Princeton radio station, watching the Patriots in the playoffs, and getting to go to Wrestlemania XX. Good vacations.
- Andre randomly coming into my room to talk about his shitting habits
- Mark and Kevin Mullaney ALWAYS getting 9:30’d
- Gagne having the motherfucking PERFECT girlfriend
- Out-chugging Lowenthal at the track house on St. Patrick’s Day, which was the drunkest I’ve ever been when I could remember everything the next day.
- Getting Tom Morin to teach me my poli sci course in 90 minutes, then getting an A- on the final and the course. God, I rule.
- The Micik 1000
- Staying up with Bill until 4 AM the day before my 8:30 final, and doing remarkably little studying in that time
- Kress wandering around in my storage area, and finding the weird old pair of little-girl panties.
- Daley’s 40 of Steel Reserve high-gravity beer
- Naming all my animals after evil Biblical creatures. I now have Jezebel (a spider), Delilah (a giant fluffy duck), Judas (a rubber rat), Herod (a little reindeer), one I can’t remember, and a new addition: Pharaoh, a giant, horrendously ugly metal dog which is “anatomically correct”. And Gary, the giant flamingo.
- Those first-floor punks ripping Chico’s head out and using the body as a pencil holder.
- Teaching the dorm the awesomeness of Daler Mehndi, The Final Countdown, Come Sail (which was taught to me by Kevin Daley), Our God Is An Awesome God, and the John Deere hat.
- Hell, it deserves its own bullet point: The John Deere hat
- One more time: The John Deere hat
- Soar-dizzle and his craziness day-in and day-out.
- Everyone inexplicably bonding over the Chappelle Show
- Kress ranting about Guns ‘n’ Roses, Kenny Loggins, Saved By The Bell, and Top Gun
- Jimmy: Worst. House. Council. Member. EVER.
- Tom Morin getting pissed off over the crossword clue for him that I came up with. ‘Flaming heterosexual’ isn’t that bad, dammit!
- Colleen drilling my head into the wall
- Sandstorm and his crazy white-boy style. That belt buckle would have made P. Diddy cry.
- Me trying to convince Bill that the CCD class he was teaching was an evil act, and that he was destroying the free will of a new generation of Americans.
- Watching the Shrewsbury vs. St. John’s rivalry brew between Twofer and Grapes.
- Jacob going to sleep when the sun was still light out
- Mullaney’s entire relationship with Dez, and his total inability to learn by going after another girl EXACTLY LIKE HER.
- Dan Cabrera just kinda standing there, wishing everyone would GET THE FUCK OUT OF HIS ROOM.
- Me taking Humphrey from Rachel and making sure he would never be pure again.
- Me getting ready to kill someone during games of Mao/Uno.
- Maureen the first time she had a drink. God, she’s a bigger lightweight than Brian.
- Speaking of that, Brian in Montreal. What a goddamn pussy.
- The entire Scandalous experience I had to endure. Thank god he got shipped down to the first floor halfway through the year, and I didn’t have to deal with him all that much again.
- More specifically, the night that Andrew, Brian, Colleen, and myself ditched him, and huddled in fear while he pounded on the door for over half an hour. Good sleepover that night, though.
- Bill desperately trying to get his workout club to go work out with him.
- Halo wars with the first floor. Those got REALLY intense, even if they owned us a solid 90% of the time. When it got competitive, nothing touched it.
- Ivan hanging out in my room a lot when Brian starting sex-iling him all the time towards the end of the year.
- Pete Luby. No specific incident I say about Luby can really sum him up. You just have to know him to really get it, and if you’re lucky enough to know him, then you get it.
- Oscar and his nonsensical arguments throughout the year, as well as his transformation into a anti-Boston fan, and his pathetic bandwagoning of the Yankees.
- Watching Family Guy nonstop at the beginning of the year with people, and having Aqua Teen and Chappelle replace it to a degree in the second half of the year.
- Cameron’s obsession with Baby Park. He finally got that sub-1:09.000 time, which I know made his week.
- Gagne forcing me to see Hellboy. I know I mentioned this once, but seriously, what a crock of shit that movie was.
- The Hanselman pirate ship. Bill will be gay sex monkey forever.
- Sandstorm’s Ninja Turtle jacket that never failed to get numerous comments any time he wore it. Seriously, what a badass jacket.
- The first time I met Wongo: Drunken, screaming loudly, and still carrying on serious conversations while I drank my Captain Morgan, and Micik’s share too, while trying to make sure Sandstorm didn’t die.
- Rachel falling asleep just about everywhere in the building.
- Katie’s a drunk!
- Micik always professing his love for how goddamn sexy A-Rod is.
- Trying to convince Kress that speed in baseball was vastly overrated, and watching how mad it would always make him (although I was always right in those conversations)
- Bill, Brian, and I planning our pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where I would be the weird wacky sidekick who kept committing sacrilegious acts by “accident” while Bill and Brian acted surprised and horrified.
- Planning out the entire Maliszewski vs. Lowenthal movie, complete with casting from people we knew at Holy Cross.
- The Dif being so damn badass. Seriously, what a badass.
- Rhoades celebrating when Scandalous peed on his stuff, just because he got rid of him. THAT is hatred at its finest.
- Kress’ facial expression when he realized the Franchise had served him. It was like watching a kid find out that Santa Claus didn’t exist.
- Listening to Moore explain why Freddy Got Fingered, Bubble Boy, and Corky Romano were better movies than The Big Lebowski, and then laughing at him.
- Laughing at Moore’s taste in just about anything, really. Seriously, how can he consider Anna Kournikova to be a butterface?
- Stealing Tom Morin’s sandal, and listening to him whine like a 8 year old for a half-hour about how I took his goddamn shoe.
- Brian threatening anything that walked, male or female, with roofies.
- Shoot, shag, and marry: Tara Marlow, the Vault R.A., the Vault R.A.’s roommate. Go!
- Listening to Lueger go on and on about the joys of Red Dawn, and Rhoades pine for Bubba Ho-Tep
- Me, Hammy, and Daley going to Boston for the Patriots victory parade. Moore, I will never forgive you for choosing music and FYP over that. And after all the titties and lesbian action we saw that day, I know I made the right choice.
- Singing along to songs over the radio on the bus ride to Boston with Greg, Michaela, and a bunch of others. I dunno why that stuck with me, but it did.
- Micik’s little brother writing a letter in Russian in my room about how much Chris sucked while we all watched The Big Lebowski
- Watching The Mummy Returns. Goddamn, that movie was awful.
- All the great times at Rockin’ With The Rev. The call-ins for Hantz’s nickname, Jimmy finding out that Catlady was stalking him, the bad 80’s songs, spontaneous Daler Mehndi dance-offs, and all the other good times just hanging out and enjoying life at 1:30 AM.
- The lists me and Mark made up in Frost’s class.
- The pickup basketball game where Zuvich and Dennis almost got into a brawl. That would have been a great experience to see the Zuv get his ass handed to him.
- Catlady just being a bitch in general. Seriously, that girl needs to stop taking everything, including herself, so goddamn seriously and realize that there is a LOT more to life than just bitching and trying to make herself look good.
- Watching Galo and Oscar yell at each other like an old married couple. I know that Galo’s gonna kill Oscar next year when they room together. It’s just a matter of when.
- Micik trying to mack with Jamie, Sheena, and all the other ladies that passed through his crosshairs over the year. Just wait for the Micik 1000, man.
- Brian and I having random 3 hour long talks, and then the weeks where we’d barely say a word to each other.
- On that note, Brian giving me some of the worst papers I’ve read in my life to proofread for his classes. I don’t know how he got out of high school writing papers like that, and I hope he works on that.
- Spanish practicum with Luis. Not a class went by where Luis didn’t try and talk with us about alcohol. I swear, he’s the reason I became an alcoholic.
- Tom Morin being a whiny little bitch, and having to play a gangster in a play. Seriously, why not cast Richard Simmons and Mario Cantone alongside him?
- Listening to Mark talk candidly when no one else was around. SO much funnier when he just cuts loose and lets people have it.
- Greg and his giant crazy Polish beers
- Jacob somehow becoming good friends with Torey, Joe, and Olavo. It just boggles the mind how he latched on with them.
- Koyton doing absolutely NOTHING in the way of mentoring.
- The great debate: Who looks more like the 80’s icon: Me and Alf, or Kevin Daley and E.T.? My vote’s on Daley, since people stuck him with the E.T. moniker early on.
- Lueger getting VERY agitated and making sure no one spoke whenever he was on the phone.
- Going back to St. Sebastian’s and realizing that I had really outgrown the place.
- Matt Moore and Mark vs. Kevin Mullaney in the disgusting picture war. If I ever see lemonparty.com or Tubgirl again, I’m gonna kill myself…
- Colleen dancing with anything in sight when she was drunk
- Being VERY thankful that PJ decided not to hang out with our group
- The hubbub that ensued the day that Greg found out that he was RA’ing in Wheeler. That was quite the shock to the system.
- Micik’s outfits every time he went clubbing, went to a FYP event, or did anything out of the ordinary.
- Me giving random lectures on things that nobody else wanted to hear about at all
- Servings for everyone. Although I’m still mad at Kress for the spyware serve.
- The Dif’s binder slaps. Seriously, that man was a menace with a binder in his hands.
- Hanselmania. Those wrestling matchups were intense, and the created characters were great. Mullaney’s stealing of the name was broke-ass for his little e-fed thing, and then the Hanselmania t-shirts were even weaker. Thank god for good hall t-shirts.
- The NCAA tournament day when we had Ninja Gaiden, basketball, and women for Matt Moore to talk about. NORTHCAROLINABEATAIRFORCEWHOO!
- Speaking of Moore, his unreasonable crush on the Skydome waitress. I hope he doesn’t rape her in August when we’re up there.
- The movies down in Lower Kimball. Not a bad deal, getting to see nice movies for free. And the night when Moore flipped out on Grapes and threw his hat…priceless.
- The continuing procrastination that nearly ruined my grades
- Bringing Kress into Frost’s class and pretending he was a prospective student, then finding out that Frost saw him on campus the next week. He never did mention it.
- Attreed’s history class, which I am QUITE thankful I never need to take again.
- The Player Hater’s Stall. Ma Kress’s pussy DOES look like Birdo’s snout.
- That feeling I had when I lay in my bed the first night at Holy Cross, and the feeling I had the last night I was there. What a change.
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And that’s only a small sample size of what happened this year. Honestly, I wish there was some way to really transcribe everything that happened, and make it possible to remember everything, but we have to sit back and let time march on in the end. I’ll really miss this year, since it was everything I didn’t think college could be. I never expected to be friends with my entire hall, to have such an easy time adjusting to freedom, to have some actual fun in my classes, and to truly be myself for the first time. This was the best year of my life, beyond the shadow of a doubt. I only hope that next year can be half as good as this one, and that Wheeler won’t kill me before the year ends.
I hope everyone from Holy Cross keeps in touch with me. Everyone read this, and pass the link on, since I’d like everyone to get a look at it. Hopefully people will be able to sit back, remember some of these things, and realize just what a good time we had. The moral of the story is that I really grew as a person, and had a hell of a time doing it. I only hope that when I look back on my life 20 years from now, I remember all the good times I had this year, and that I have many more to remember as well. Peace out, homies. Stay in touch, let’s visit over the summer if you’re nearby, and I’ll see you all in the fall. Until we meet again.