Zot, Zot, Zot

Besides the usual reminders to give them money, I've had a couple of opportunities to think of my undergrad alma mater UC Irvine this week. Irvine was an odd school to go to. It was right in the middle of VERY conservative Orange County but attracted its fair share of non-conformists, most of whom seemed to congregate at the campus radio station and newspaper, which shared the same floor above the cafeteria.

A couple of days ago I heard from the guy who was the music director at KUCI while I was the program director. He came from a well-to-do family, so he always had plenty of money and drugs. He was good looking enough that he also attracted some excellent female attention. We didn't hang out a ton, but we enjoyed some of the same music and was a fun dude to be around. He was on the few who made his way into the music business after graduating. So, it was a surprise to hear that he was now doing film work. He didn't share any details of this, but the advent of music downloading has really shrunk the size of the record companies. Since he's still in LA, I look forward to having a couple of beers with him and getting caught up.

In other Anteater news, the basketball team is in the Big West tournament finals against Cal State Fullerton. The winner goes to the NCAA tournament, something Irvine has NEVER done (Fullerton had a great run in the tournament about a million years ago. OK, 1978). One of the cool things I got to do at the radio station was be the play-by-play announcer for the basketball games. There were a couple of years that the team was really good, but there was always someone better (usually UNLV) even though they had some players who made it to the NBA. Who knows, maybe this year is the one (we'll find out at 8pm).