Words falling, dropping against the floor in Cuban jazz rhythms.

“What’s hid-ing in the ten-e-ment hawwwls?” she sing-songs, her fingernails trailing against the old hallway that’s wearing thirteen coats of off-white paint. She looks over at me for acknowledgment of her creation, and I smile and force an audible amount of breath out of my nose to let her know I’m amused.

I look back down towards the end of the hallway, the dark door to the stairwell glowing red under the EXIT sign. This subtle disassociation is enough to annoy her. (read on…)

That old time excitement and pomp that used to pervade the American College Experience has long since passed us by; anyone older than fifty can tell you that. The exuberant sense of school pride and fervor for tradition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise disappeared with the expansion of the middle-class, and even the freewheeling adventuresome spirit depicted in Animal House has eroded into the abysmal pseudo-parties of frat houses today. (read on…)