It's not pretty, but 'Animal House' defines a generation

Miami Herald ^ | 08/24/03 | GLEN GARVIN

[weegee]

Tim Matheson? Oh, you mean that guy who played Jonny Quest:

[weegee]

No discussion of Animal House would be complete without mentioning this foul 1979 knockoff (which is even available on DVD in England).

It has its own website KingFrat.com

"Delightfully disgusting "Animal House" ripoff consisting of 80 per cent fart jokes (3 stars)" JOE BOB BRIGGS

"One of the highlights of the movie is when they get the newspaper and on the front page in about 32 pt font is "BIG FART CONTEST". Apparently it was very newsworthy." BAD MOVIES

[MeekOneGOP]

I love that movie (Blues Brothers) ...

[Gorzaloon]

I read Hunters' Hells Angels first. I've stayed away from his other political works. He ranks President George W. Bush as worse than Richard Nixon.

I recall how he wrote about Nixon.

Well, that's it for him in my book, then.

[8mmMauser]

I was too early! The U. of O. Student Union is where I worked and Skinner's Butte, the campus were all part of my life for four years, prior to the setting in the movie. I missed a lot of that stuff.

Not completely, though, the campus was already divided up into the feeble lefties counter to the muscle men and the snobbish sorority babes. The precursors were there.

[Publius6961]

Ha ha ha!

One of the achievements in life about which I am proud.

Never watched it.
Or Roseanne.
Or Friends
Or Oprah.
Or Jerry Springer.
Or Jesse what'sherface.

Or dozens of other "shows" aimed at the shallow end of the gene pool.

[archy]

Old School was OK but I know once I buy Animal house I'll never watch Old School again.

And last year's Road Trip if you want to make a festival of it. That one had it's moments, too.

Tomorrow is mixed emotion day, Animal House and Warren Zevon's last album. I've got a bottle of scotch already picked to help me sort it out.

How'd it go, man? Myself, I think I'll save that album for the sad time when we get that known-to-be-coming bad news that his ride's here, and I think that night I'll go out to some lonely place I know with a bottle of tequila and go play Midnight in the Switchin' Yard on my harp at the stars.

Those etudes of his, on the Bad luck Streak in Dancin' School album, I believe, come to mind too. He's just an excitable boy.

Funny, as he goes, I'm reminded of Del Shannon a lot. I miss him a bunch, too. Still.

-archy-/-

[discostu]

Road Trip is pretty cool. Of all the Animal House clones I like Revenge of the Nerds the best, it comes closest in spirit, and being filmed right here at the UofA I know exactly where every scene takes place.

Haven't picked the stuff up yet, that the lunchtime trip. Sure hope nobody at work expects me to be at all productive after lunch.

It reminds me of Zappa, he was 53 and also held on for one last project... maybe that's why I picked a Zappa line for my tag last week. There's something wrong with a world where rock stars, who are supposed to be the epitome of rebellion, die of cancer. Zappa, Zevon, Joey Ramone, it just ain't right. Rebels are supposed to die being rebelious, not of old people illnesses.

[js1138]

Possibly the best movie of all time. I started college in 1963. My dorm section called itself "The Zoo", later changed to "The Seamen". We spent an entire night locking everyone in on the second floor. A lot of doors were destroyed the next morning.

Only half of The Zoo made it to the second semester.

[weegee]

I know that at Boston Universtity, the dorm at 700 Commonweatlth Avenue was called the ZOO (just add a line to the bottom of the 700, which I hear someone did one year and supposedly it remained there a long while).

[MP5]

Is that a pledge pen? ON YOUR UNIFORM???!!

[js1138]

I just keep on trying And I smile when I feel like dying On and on, On and on, On and on....

...Sound of Telecaster smashing over your head...

[Feiny]

IS THAT A PLEDGE PIN????
ON YOUR UNIFORM?!!?

[js1138]

The baby boom began after the war (August 1945 was victory in Japan). Kids gestate for 9 months. 18 years from 1945 would be 1963. The college kids at Farber were not baby boomers. They were before the baby boom. Some of the upper classmen had been studying for years. Try again.

OK, try this. I'm a boomer and started college in 1963. Lots of boomers were born before the war was officially over. The official start date of the boom was 1946, but lots of people celebrated early. VE Day was May of 1945, but people saw the end before that.

[js1138]

I might add that my high school class drove our teachers crazy with our attitude. I went to a military prep school from grades 9-11. My senior year the school gave up the military component. We just weren't taking it seriously, and the classes behind us were "worse".

[Feiny]

You beat me to it so I will post this:

Otter: Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons. But that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.

Bluto: We're just the guys to do it.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

My favorite Animal House line: "Fat drunk and stupid is no way to go throught life, son"

[Richard Kimball]

Bump

[weegee]

Generational terms don't mean anything anymore. I was born in 1968 yet I still hear 18 year olds being called "Generation X"; these are the baby boomers kids, the generation that followed the "baby bust" (another population "explosion").

I still contend that the majority of students at Faber College were born long before the end of WWII and certainly before the postwar explosion in the birthrate. Not every student started the same year and Animal House is set in 1962.

[bicycle thug]

I worked at a convience store on Alder Street in Eugene. Oregon when I was going to thre University of Oregon, where most of 'Animal House' was filmed.

Jeb, who owned 'Jeb's Hotdog Den' next door would come over at a moment's notice to get rowdy Frat Boys, or whatever drunk felt his oats back in line.

He is a good friend who keep things sane there for me on weekend nights.

Who is he? Remember the huge, burley black man who ripped up the table at the 'Dexter Lake lodge' and asked the 'Animal House' boys if; "They minded if they (the club patrons) danced with their dates?" That's Jeb. And he really really is as big in life as he is on screen in the movie.