re: #46 Romantic Heretic

Real Genius is one of my all time favourite movies.

THat movie came out just a few years after I graduated from Caltech. I knew one of the Techers who served as an advisor. It was not too far off on some stuff. I participated in a contest Burger King put on that allowed unlimited entries, as Lazlo, the guy in the steam tunnels, suggested. We printed out over a million entries and delivered them to BK around the LA basin. Won a lot of stuff that funded parties for years.

We did not have ice skating in the hallways but we did have alley surfing, where we would flood one of the alleys in the basement, which was nice smooth concrete, with soapy water. Then go running down the hallway and skid on the soapy water, trying to mantain our balance. The good surfers could spin and do some tricks. And there were guys at the end to catch someone before they hit a wall. We usually stopped when someone fell and hit their head on the floor. (Yeah for such smart guys we were pretty stupid).

And one of the great memes from the time were the initials DEI, for Dabney Eats It (Dabney was one of the houses on campus.) DEI is printed on the voyager spacecraft and supposedly was written in the dust on the moon. It appears several times in Real Genius, such as “Darlington Electronic Instruments” sponsoring Hathaways show. I smile everytime I see what DEI is used for now. I suspect some prankster Techer came up with the original abbreviation.

The scene with Kent’s car parked in his room really happened. The gentleman who interviewed me before admission to Caltech described that prank in detail. SOmeone made the comment he was going away for the weekend, so his friends bought an old Model T for like 20 bucks, took it apart and reassembled it in his room. They were kind enough to help him get it out.

The steam tunnels, whole supposedly off limits to underclassman, were used entensively to move between buildings when it was raining. There were extensive maps and some people put some realy time in exploring them.

Jordan is actually based on a young girl at Caltech, which only stared admitting females about 1970. Purple tapioca was often used to describe someones brain. Liquid nitrogen was available to any student, who could charge it to their account, which, if not too great might get paid for the parents without them noticing.

We always tried to have girls from the nearby college (Wanda Trossler School of Beauty) but that was Pasadena City College (I actually found better success at Mount St Mary’s, which required a car to drive to). ALso, our honor system actually allowed us to take most tests in our rooms. I think I took one in-class test in 4 years. SO Hathaway was a prick for having his test proctored. Also, Chris picking a lock would not be unusual. Almost all the Freshman were shown how to pick locks and many guys had the tools.

Couple of things they left out would have been Mitch’s discovery of Duct Tape as a universal tool. Caltech sold it to any student to, again, put on their account, but it was the real industrial stuff seldom seen in hardware stores today. We used it for everything. I mean, I think some of that stuff is still holding things together.

The other was showering people. People were showered for all sorts of reasons. If a hallway phone rang more than 5 times without a frosh picking it up to take a message, the upperclassman would pick up the nearest frosh and immerse them in the nearest showers. This was a rigorous process calling for 6 people - one on each arm and leg, one on the gut and one with a full nelso on the neck. Thus making it impossible to stop them. well, it was a good way to learn everyone’s name as you wandered the house going “Louie Scheffer. Is Louis anywhere around?” People could opt-out of being showered but then they could never participate - and showering members of rival houses during water balloon wars was a big deal. (On one’s birthday, you were ‘oceaned’ which is pretty self explantory followed by a hamburger at Tommy’s)

Ahh. Memories.